FINAL COURSE

Noma: World’s Best Restaurant Set to Close in 2024

Chef René Redzepi said the modern fine-dining model is “unsustainable.”

Noma, the Copenhagen fine-dining institution widely considered the best restaurant in the world, is set to close for regular food service in 2024. “To continue being noma, we must change,” a post shared on the restaurant’s Instagram page on Monday read. “Winter 2024 will be the last season of noma as we know it. We are beginning a new chapter; noma 3.0.” In an interview with the New York Times, chef René Redzepi said Noma would instead become a full-time food laboratory with the dining room only opening occasionally for pop-ups. “It’s unsustainable,” Redzepi said of the modern fine-dining model. “Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.” His $500+ per person, three-Michelin-star restaurant topped the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants for a record-breaking fifth time in 2021.