Eatdrink #81 January/February 2020

eatdrink: The Local Food & Drink Magazine
Author Jeff Gordinier (left) and Chef René Redzepi from
Copenhagen’s renowned restaurant Noma
Redzepi throughout their travels. Before his
fortuitous meeting with Redzepi, the author’s
gloominess about life hinged on a failing
marriage, but with chefs with the status of
rock stars surrounding him, with the globe as
their playground, he became intoxicated with
shadowing Redzepi.
With nine trips to Mexico alone over the
course of four years, the author witnessed
the chef’s attempts to elevate mole beyond
its regional status, never in a way to replicate
the sauce, but maybe change it in ways to
radiate from the Noma ethos. The same
went for tortillas. Sure, Redzepi could make
them, although he sensed his limitations
by never making them the same as the old
women in Mexican villages. He can seemingly
make a meal out of anything, but perfect
tortillas stumped him. All the more reason to
obsessively visit Mexico to watch the Mayan
women who could do it with such ease.
A meal at Noma was a ticket Gordinier
would have gladly taken at any point in his
career, but his first meal there happened
just before Redzepi decided to shutter his
restaurant. The meal itself sounded as if it
were conjured by wizardry, with combinations
that only made sense in Redzepi’s mind —
pumpkin and caviar, shrimp and radish, sea
urchin and hazelnuts. Gordinier attributed
Noma’s closure to the chef being restless,
looking to move on, aspiring to something
beyond that which had already been
considered the best in the world. Reinventing
is something that seems to come easily to
the chef. Gordinier is informed that Noma
2.0 will be resurrected in a new location
in Copenhagen in the future, but until
then Noma pop-ups were given temporary
residency in Japan, Australia, and Mexico.
The pop-up operations did not always
run smoothly, but financial and logistical
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impediments were no match for the chef’s
obsession to prove that being hungry for new
ideas can lead to revelations.
As readers, we are lucky that Gordinier
got caught up in Redzepi’s orbit, to chronicle
a rare glimpse into culinary ingenuity.
Gordinier’s writing is brilliant and vibrant and
intriguing: he is immersed in the glistening,
bubbling, aromatic cornucopia of Oaxaca
marketplaces; he finds himself harvesting
wild edibles in the Australian wilderness with
Noma-trained foragers; he raises an eyebrow
at the strangeness of New Nordic dishes with
ingredients like moss, fermented crickets, sea
buckthorn, pig’s blood, and kelp, until realizing
they are indeed the best food imaginable.
The book generally acts as a biography
of Redzepi, but it is just as much about
Gordinier’s rise from despair. Hungry is not
only about satisfying food cravings, but
following those other feelings that squirm in
the pit of your stomach and drive you to shake
up your life when it’s most needed.
DARIN COOK is a freelance writer based in Chatham
who keeps himself well-read and well-fed by visiting the
bookstores and restaurants in London.