After Its Embattled Los Angeles Residency, Noma to Reopen in Copenhagen

Following a tumultuous 16-week residency in Los Angeles, Noma will head back home to Copenhagen to resume regular restaurant service as Noma 3.0. The Silver Lake residency is set to conclude on June 26, after which Noma will reopen in Copenhagen on August 5, 2026; reservations for August through October will go live via Noma’s newsletter on June 24. The surprise reopening arrives after Noma previously paused operations in Copenhagen at the beginning of 2026. At the time, the restaurant was not slated to reopen to the public until the end of 2027 as it focused on traveling residencies, foodways research, and its retail arm Noma Projects. 

“[The reopening] is for us to be the most creative, best version of ourselves,” says Annika de Las Heras, who will step in as Noma’s new CEO. “And for us, that’s returning back home and doing what we know best in an incredibly beautiful space that we’re lucky to have here and really diving into the creativity.” 

This recalibration comes amid a monthslong reckoning with abuse and misconduct allegations against Noma founder René Redzepi, which reemerged in a New York Times story by Julia Moskin published days before the Los Angeles residency began in March. Moskin’s report details accounts from dozens of former Noma employees who allege instances of emotional and physical abuse during their time working at the restaurant, including threats to have workers’ families deported, an instance of Redzepi assaulting a team member with a barbecue fork during service, and another of him punching a cook. The former staff interviewed worked at the restaurant between 2009 and 2017. In an Instagram statement addressing the allegations, Redzepi wrote, “Although I don’t recognize all details in these stories, I can see enough of my past behavior reflected in them to understand that my actions were harmful to people who worked with me.” 

The report, and allegations shared on Instagram by the Noma Abuse account, spurred protests led by former head of fermentation, Jason Ignacio White, and One Fair Wage outside the first day of Noma’s residency at the Paramour Estate in Silver Lake; at around 5 p.m. as Noma concluded its first lunch service, Redzepi announced he would step away from day-to-day operations at the restaurant and his nonprofit, Mad Food. At the time, White told Eater that he and former Noma team members were still seeking more accountability. 

Moskin’s report was not the first time Redzepi’s alleged behavior has come to light: In 2015, Redzepi authored an essay published in Lucky Peach in which he wrote that he had “been a bully for a large part of my career” and admitted to yelling at and “pushing” people. Following the Noma Los Angeles protest, a spokesperson for Noma shared a statement with Eater outlining changes made to transform the organization’s culture since 2022, including a fully paid internship program, improved hours and time off, a dedicated human resources team, and leadership training. In response to the allegations, Noma also “initiated an externally led workplace audit to independently review” its practices and assess worker safety. 

As Noma heads back to Copenhagen, the restaurant — and its leadership structure — will look different. Redzepi will remain closely involved at Noma as founder and creative director but will step away from daily operations in the kitchen. The restaurant will be led by head of research and development Mette Brink Søberg and executive chef Pablo Soto, with de Las Heras as chief executive officer. 

De Las Heras, who has worked at Noma for more than a decade, says the allegations that have emerged do not reflect what the restaurant is today. “It’s challenging to see a version of your organization that you don’t feel characterizes who we are today,” she says. “There were stories that were shared that were maybe eight, 10 years old or longer. In my 14 years, there’s been a lot of change and evolution in how to manage both creative pressure, excitement, motivation, and a sense of urgency.” Still, she hopes to continue to “professionalize” the organization. “We never really miss an opportunity to look at any critical feedback and have conversations ourselves and say, ‘Look, what are things that we could do better?’” de Las Heras says. 

Søberg, who joined Noma in 2013 as an intern before moving to the research and development team, recalls her early days working in kitchens marked by a lack of organization and human resources. “This has also sparked some thoughts about how we can, for example, bring everyone who works at the restaurant much closer together so that we also have a better understanding of what each other is doing and have more respect for each other’s work,” Søberg says. She also emphasizes that the test kitchen at Noma goes beyond just Redzepi; currently, the team has up to 12 people. With the reopening, she hopes to further convey how expansive the Noma team is, even though, historically, the restaurant has been synonymous with Redzepi’s name and persona. 

Soto, who was appointed Noma’s head chef in 2023, has been on the front lines of the Noma pop-up in Los Angeles amid the controversy. “I’m not going to just try to sugarcoat it and say everything is so peachy,” he says. “The truth is, it was a difficult situation mostly because we’ve been planning this for years now and the team cares about it.” As the residency progressed, Soto felt an even greater responsibility to deliver an experience that reflected what he saw as Noma’s current state and what the team hoped to convey in Los Angeles. As it approaches its conclusion, he feels assured in the belief that they did the best they could. “It felt unfair that the team had to deal with something that had happened somewhere in the past and had nothing to do with them specifically or with anyone around here,” Soto says. He adds that while some guests had questions about the allegations, he felt most were there to support the team and the restaurant. 

Reflecting on his beginnings at Noma as an intern nearly 15 years ago, before he returned in 2017 for its Mexico residency, Soto says he has seen a shift in how kitchens are run, including more management systems and structure for staff. Still, he recognizes that working in restaurants has often felt like a high-stakes environment — something he sought out at Noma during his internship and upon his return. “I was seeking the experience I had many years ago, which was an experience of having my limits pushed,” Soto says. “I’m not saying someone was forcing me, but feeling that I was pushing myself into learning a completely different language in the kitchen. I remember this feeling of being included. I felt, okay, I’m part of something that really matters here.” In his role as head chef, Soto hopes to instill in his team not only the technical skills that come with working at Noma but also a more sustainable approach to kitchen organization, including improved communication between staff and leadership. 

Sustainability, or lack thereof, has been a through line at Noma since its inception. Noma was founded as an exploration of Nordic cuisine through local produce and foraging; in its current home, the restaurant uses ingredients from its on-site gardens and, through its research arm, looks toward what foods of the future may be. While it searched for sustainability on the plate, fissures emerged on the business side. In 2023, Redzepi announced that the restaurant would close, positing that the style of fine dining Noma helped create was unsustainable. 

Reflecting on Redzepi’s comments around the previous closure, de Las Heras says that for some time, Noma was figuring out how to juggle the expansion of its retail and development arm, Noma Projects, alongside international pop-ups and the continuing operations of the Copenhagen restaurant. Now, with new leadership in place, she sees a greater capacity to work across projects without spreading the team too thin. “When we think about sustainability as a business, we think about what is driving what and who is driving the restaurant operations,” de Las Heras says. “We have so much of the team who’ve been with us for so many years, and how do we sustain the business in order to keep everyone with us for the long term?” For the team, Noma’s return to its roots as a Copenhagen restaurant has become an answer to that question. 

Noma 3.0 will depart from the three-season model introduced in 2018; instead, the team is calling the new menu an exploration of 12 seasons. “We’re in a moment where we want to extract more out of the smaller seasons themselves,” Soto says. The menu will further reflect the terroir of Copenhagen when ingredients peak for only a brief moment. “I think what we’re about to do is quite a big leap creatively, and it’s going to really challenge us as well,” Søberg says. In practice, if a guest dined at Noma in August and returned in October, the majority of the menu would have changed. The shift reminds Søberg of the sense of time and place expressed through cooking that drew her to the restaurant in the first place — now, she’ll get a chance to convey the natural spontaneity of the seasons. “Honestly, I think most of our team has been with us so long, and I can already feel that if they’ve done the same menu for two months, they’re already asking me like, ‘Ah, can we change it?’” Søberg says. 

Soto especially looks forward to summer, when produce is bountiful, and the dead of winter, whose barrenness forces a creative approach to making the most out of ingredients. The cost will remain similar to Noma 2.0, with the menu priced at 4,500 Danish krones (about $700).

“I want people to just come and have a nice meal,” Soto says of Noma’s return to Copenhagen, adding that he realizes the sentiment sounds simple. He emphasizes the constraints Noma imposes on itself, including the menu’s hyperseasonality and the service team’s role in guests’ experience. “A huge part of what we do is the way people are served and the energy in the dining room,” Soto says. Søberg feels eager to have the entire team under one roof again after years of being spread across the world for pop-ups, and to returning to what she sees as the soul of Noma. “We’ve realized that the core of Noma — actually having the restaurant and having the test kitchen operate, having a full dining room of guests and that kind of vibe and energy — that is the beating heart of Noma,” she says. “Without that, all the other projects have less meaning.”

As Noma heads home, de Las Heras says that the team feels they have something to prove. She anticipates that, in the context of the allegations against Redzepi and the broader conversation around the ethics of fine dining, there will be a mixed response to the restaurant’s return. “What we’ve talked to the team about in LA is really you do win people over one person at a time, one service at a time, and we’re going to do it with the same approach here,” she says. “Open the doors and be excited to share who we are.”