I am wandering the wilderness of France this week dodging protests and celebrating the anniversary of my birth. Which is to say I’m positive we’re eating well. And I … like eating well.
In 2018, I brought 19 other humans to Noma, the world’s best restaurant, for a series of 22+ courses including a fried duck wing (feathers still on); a pinioned ‘beetle’ crafted from fruit leather, so realistic our entire table had to build up the courage to eat it; and a host of other tiny ridiculous dishes that required the energy and imagination of dozens of people. The dinner and wine pairing cost something like $22,000 and upon our arrival the entire kitchen stopped to greet us.
It was dinner as theater, an incredible experience — but we left the kitchen so very very hungry that most folks stayed up all night eating junk food from street vendors and watching the sun come up from the top of our houseboat. It was an exceptional, monumental testament to our cumulative foodie-based yuppieness. And the Michelin-starred meals I’ve consumed since then have rarely lived up to that night.
However, news that Noma is closing in 2024 following a long run as ‘the world’s best restaurant’ isn’t that surprising — because like many companies around the world, Noma is being forced to assess its working conditions.
The announcement of the restaurant's closure came just months after Noma started paying its interns, for example. Some of those interns, many of whom have gone on from that kitchen to found Michelin-star restaurants of their own, reported doing only menial labor, such as crafting hundreds of those ‘beetles’, for the duration of their time there.
It turns out that it’s not possible for Noma to compensate all the hands that help craft those immaculate restaurant experiences and also stay afloat.
As Sam Stone wrote in Bon Appetit, “If Noma, where diners pay $500 (or $800!) per person, can’t keep its doors open for regular service while paying its workers a wage, then the industry at large has some major restructuring to do.”
This is the kind of social reckoning that comes with every recession, because this ‘luxatarian’ diet is simply not sustainable in any meaningful way for most people. And it shouldn’t be.
As Anya Taylor Joy points out in her incredible role in ‘The Menu,’ how is it possible to spend thousands of dollars on a cuisine that fails to satiate hunger, even as we revel in the complexities of its taste and presentation?
Recession and all, let this be a time to reflect on what we really need as humans — and be ok parting with some of the excess.
I can’t remember the first time I read Goodnight Moon — probably because my parents started reading it to me before my infant brain could really catalog memory. Chances are, you had a similar experience. The book turns 75 this year, and over that time, it’s sold over 48 million copies, touching at least that many lives, time and time over.
Hello, friends, and happy scam season. To usher in the spirit, let me tell you a story.