How Noma Will Blossom In Kyoto

The best restaurant in the world just began its second pop-up in Japan. Here's what's cooking 

- Oscar Boyd

When they are seated at Noma Kyoto, which opened on March 15, guests can expect to see dishes such as hot pot with a broth of smoked mekabu (the stems of wakame seaweed) and mountain vegetables with a vinaigrette of Japanese spiny lobster brain and boar fat. They’ll also be served dishes with freshly made yuba, or tofu skin, rose petals and, controversially for René Redzepi, the revered Japanese staple, rice.

“Last time we didn’t dare cook rice,” says the chef and co-owner of the world-famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma, referring to his first pop-up in Japan. “What could we add to the table that would surprise people?” This time, he says, “I know that we have to.”

Noma, which has topped the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list five times, most recently in 2021, will run the Kyoto residency for 10 weeks, until May 20. Tickets sold out in 37 minutes when they went on sale in November.

The restaurant’s previous pop-up in Japan was in 2015 at the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo, pairing Japanese ingredients and techniques with the experimental Nordic cooking for which Noma is known—including foraged flora, fermented pastes and clever incorporations of unconventional ingredients like tree bark and ants. “Everything about this one is more ambitious,” says Redzepi, speaking from the kitchen of the Ace Hotel. “For the locals, we want them to feel like a spaceship landed in their city.”