Noma - Part 1 

The Copenhagen way of life is nothing short of amazing, with lots of food, beer, laughs and memorable times. The general young population love partying and living life to the fullest on our days off. Being such a tight group of people inside the kitchen really pays off as we develop into a family together outside making it easy to mix and have the craic together. One big thing that I was told by my Danish roomies was that I look too foreign, so I had to change my wardrobe. I guess wearing GAA gear is a no go here in Copenhagen! Comparing the life here to back home is like 2 different worlds, here the energy is constantly going with there always time for a meeting and a beer on our off days or even coffee before our workdays. Life is good here for sure! 

To be completely honest, I don’t believe it’ll ever set in that I am working at Noma seeing the likes of Rene Redzepi everyday and talking to him just as a normal person. The staff at Noma are some of the most caring people I have ever met in the industry, with everyone asking how you are and always a good morning and a good night, it is a very positive workplace. As for the work itself, we do a lot. Everyday we begin roughly at 8 to 10 AM, we start by packing away orders, preparing set ups for mise en place, and then we begin preparing food. We usually have 82 guests, or as we call them “Friends”, to make sure they feel at home with us. Anyway, we must always do a lot of preparation such as peeling Artichokes, beech nuts, straining stocks and sauces, painting moulds of bugs, sorting ants and organising it all to make it easier to finish down the line. One of the largest jobs we have everyday is the peeling, cutting and deseeding of roughly 550 cherry tomatoes for one of our first courses. It takes about 8 chefs to do this in about two hours start to finish. The last quite large job we have to do for service is building cauliflower flowers, by laying down one slice of cauliflower and overlapping again and again until you have a beautiful flower ready for our guests. We begin this job at half three, and we need 48 by half four. Seems easy enough but to do it right it takes time so we’re always struggling to get it done on time, however it usually comes down to the fact that since there’s so much to do elsewhere we can never get enough people to help us with it. During service I am very lucky to be able to cook a clam and saffron custard and also to be able to plate it for our customers. This dish is then finished with egg yolk sauce, black pepper, cured, dried and smoked fish, and lastly very expensive roe. To be quite frank, it tastes absolutely superb. Recently I have also been positioned on the production pass where we plate the Cauliflower tostada and the custard dish. 

I have also had the job to produce Family meal for 9 days. It consists of breakfast for 60 people, and then lunch for 80 everyday with the same breakfast everyday but always different lunches. I was paired with an Italian and Finnish chef and also an American fellow intern, we made Smoked Salmon, Ramen, Swedish Meatballs, Lentil Dahl, L’acqua Pazza, Cacio e Pepe, BBQ Chicken, Fish Pie and Pesto Pasta with chicken. It’s known to be the most stressful week of the internship but it is such a great opportunity to grow professionally and personally despite the stress. In conclusion to my first four weeks here in Noma, I love it and can’t wait to get back into it!