Noma Named is the World’s Best Restaurant

Image: Noma

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants ranking is out and Danish restaurant Noma is back in the top spot, previously holding this position in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014.

Co-owner Rene Redzepi accepted the award in Antwerp, Belgium with the Noma team on stage.

With the new rules in place for the ranking, this will be the last time the restaurant accepts the award. The World’s 50 Best now retires entries from the list after they hit the top spot. Noma was still eligible because this is its first time winning the award in its new location.

noma world's best restaurant — Image: The World’s 50 Best

Noma ties with El Bulli (Catalonia, Spain, run by chef Ferran Adrià) for the most wins ever. Due to the rule changes, no other restaurant will match the tallies. The change was billed as a diversity initiative but in 2019 the Times revealed that chefs feared a drop in their reputation as they fell from the number one spot lobbied for the change.

Noma regained the top spot after sitting at number two in the 2019 rankings. The previous year’s (2020) rankings were scrapped because of the coronavirus and the organisation acknowledged that the ongoing pandemic had changed the voting procedures.

Noma offers three different menus at different times of the year, with seafood season for the first six months of the year, vegetable season for the summer, and game and forest in the winter.

Back when people could fly around the world freely, pre-pandemic, a spot on the top 50 list could drive business for these restaurants.

“Bookings went through the roof,” Redzepi told the crowd as he accepted the top-ranking today and recalled what happened the first time Noma had won. “Tuesdays became like Saturdays. Our website crashed multiple times.”