Noma to close and reopen with a floating farm

René Redzepi ready for a new challenge after 12 years

Denmark’s most famous restaurant Noma is closing down at the end of the year and reopening sometime in 2017 at a new location near Christiania where it will also operate a floating urban farm, according to its owner and head chef, René Redzepi.

The restaurant’s urban farming enterprise will be located on a floating barge, while a greenhouse will be placed on the roof of the new restaurant – a new architectural gem for the city to enjoy, by all accounts. At the moment, the location is an abandoned lot littered with overgrown weeds, broken glass and empty graffiti spray cans.

“It makes sense to do it here. It makes sense to have your own farm when you’re a restaurant of this calibre,” Redzepi told the New York Times. “We’ll build a raft and put a huge field on the raft. We need a full-time farmer with a team.”

READ MORE: Noma to close in Copenhagen for ten weeks

Wizard to Oz
But before then, Noma, which has been named the best restaurant in the world four times by Restaurant Magazine, has a very busy schedule.

The restaurant will close down on 1 January 2016 and relocate to Sydney for ten weeks as a pop-up restaurant in the harbour of the Australian city.

Redzepi revealed that the new place will change its menu with the seasons, whether its wild game in the autumn or fish in the winter.

“Of course we could just keep continuing: just stay put and do what we do,” Redzepi said.

“But I genuinely think that we won’t progress. I have yet to meet anyone who thinks this is a stupid thing.”