‘I truly fell in love with Los Angeles': Why Rene Redzepi chose L.A. for Noma's next pop-up

Los Angeles Times

01-07-2025

Noma's Rene Redzepi and his international team of chefs, servers, foragers, fermentation geeks, programmers and more are coming to Los Angeles next year for a months-long residency — the restaurant's first in the U.S.
'We were supposed to be in L.A. this coming fall,' Redzepi said during a brief interview inside one of the greenhouses next to his Copenhagen restaurant not long before the official announcement. 'But with the fires, we thought it was all canceled. Then it wasn't canceled and we moved it to March.'
Like a troupe of culinary troubadours, Redzepi's team has packed up their knives and garums several times since the restaurant first opened in 2004 and was named the World's Best Restaurant five times. In 2016, they traveled to Sydney; in 2017, they were on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula; in 2018, Noma was in Tokyo; and they've been to Kyoto twice, in 2023 and 2024. But Los Angeles has long been on Redzepi's radar.
'We've been working on L.A. for a while,' he said. 'In fact, we've been working on America for a while, never really finding that perfect location. I wasn't really knowing America well enough to properly make a decision. People would say, 'Oh, you should be in New York.' Only when I went with my whole family to L.A. some years back, that's when we fell in love with Los Angeles. Yeah, I truly fell in love with Los Angeles.'
The other times he'd come to Los Angeles had been for work. 'It was sporadic, very hectic,' he said. 'In and out.'
This extended trip was different for Redzepi, his children and wife Nadine Levy Redzepi, author of the cookbook 'Downtime: Deliciousness at Home.'
'We stayed in Manhattan Beach,' he said. 'We had days of just strolling around, meeting people, going to all the farmers markets and realizing how many people I know in Los Angeles. It was great having them take us to their favorite places — with Roy Choi in Koreatown and the guys from Night + Market [Kris and Sarah Yenbamroong] taking us around eating Thai food.'
At the recently revived Mad Symposium, a gathering of chefs, farmers and other food professionals, as well as artists and thinkers, one of the speakers was Los Angeles chef Justin Pichetrungsi of Anajak Thai. His talk: 'How to Take Over Your Parent's Restaurant in Five Easy Steps.'
'He's an extraordinary guy. I really, really like Justin,' Redzepi said. 'To tell the truth, when I went [to his Thai Taco Tuesday] for the first time, that's when I felt, okay, this has to be the place, Los Angeles.
'Because I was like, this can only happen in Los Angeles. There's something going on — that sort of daringness where you just do things. There's a creative energy I find in Los Angeles that is based on sort of this grassroots experience, not on money that made you be creative.
'It's actually more rare than you think in food these days, because most food, you know, it's big budgets, it's big projects.'
'Another thing I love about L.A.?' he said. 'Tacos. Not just tacos. Noodles. Sushi. Ahhh! ... You can find every single ingredient in Los Angeles, and they all taste extraordinary.
'When you come from Denmark, a homogeneous place, it's exciting to arrive in L.A. It's like the world came to live in one place.'
Redzepi, of course, is known for staffing his restaurant with chefs and servers from all over the world.
'Our team is from everywhere,' he said. 'Mexicans, Chinese, Italians, which is lovely.' His current head chef is Pablo Soto, who is from Mexico City.
'The only thing that can stop us,' Redzepi acknowledges, 'is if we don't get visas. I just got my visa a few days ago.'
Redzepi is hoping that even with the fraught political environment, his team can contribute something good to the city.
'We're gonna come to L.A. wearing the biggest positivity hat you can imagine. We're just gonna give it all we have, and we're gonna cook, and we're going to be with people, and we're going to hike in the mountains, and we're going to have coffee shops. We're going to have pop-ups with other people. It will be five or six months of energy and trying to meet all the creative people of Los Angeles, and learn from them and be inspired by them.'
Members of thNoma team have already made three trips to L.A. for research without Redzepi. 'We were worried that if I went on these trips people would sniff out the project and the news would get out. But he plans to arrive for the long term in late fall.
'If everything goes well, I'll be there in November. I can't wait.'