The Noma Reopening Has No Michelin Stars and No Founder

The Noma reopening in Copenhagen went ahead on 5 August with two things conspicuously absent: the chef who built the place, and the three Michelin stars it spent two decades collecting. René Redzepi, who opened Noma in 2003 and turned foraged Nordic cooking into a global template, has stepped back into a creative director role. Someone else runs the kitchen now.

That someone is Pablo Soto, a longtime Noma chef promoted to executive head chef. Dinner costs 4,500 Danish kroner a head — roughly £520 at current rates — with the wine pairing adding another 2,000 kroner, taking the bill to around £750 before you've booked a flight. According to Euronews, the dining room is close to fully booked through the end of October.

The restaurant is serving again five months after Redzepi stepped away in March, following a New York Times investigation in which former employees described verbal abuse and physical assault in the kitchen between 2009 and 2017. Noma has been ranked the world's best restaurant five times. What happens to it from here is being watched across the industry as a test of whether elite kitchens can genuinely change how they treat people.

Who Is Running Noma's Kitchen Now?

Soto has the top job, with Mette Brink Søberg leading research and development — the department that invents the dishes in the first place. Redzepi keeps a creative director title and remains involved in the business, which is the part critics find hardest to accept. He is no longer the boss on the floor, but he has not walked away either. Soto, quoted by Fortune, has been blunt about the mood.

It's been crazy tough. There's been a lot of media attention and questions about what we're doing, but we're still here standing.

Redzepi has said he is excited to see fresh energy come into the restaurant. Whether that reads as graceful or convenient depends largely on how much weight you give to the fact that his name is still above the door and his fingerprints are still on the food.

What the Noma Reopening Actually Changes

Plenty of restaurants issue statements after a scandal and carry on exactly as before. Noma's changes are more concrete than most, though they arrived in stages over four years rather than all at once in response to the March allegations.

Pay, Hours and the End of Unpaid Interns

Noma ran on unpaid stagiaires for years — trainees working brutal hours for a line on a CV. That model ended in 2022, replaced by paid six- and twelve-month placements. Staff also got a four-day week, health insurance, parental leave and pension support. Worth noting for British readers: HMRC has long held that anyone doing real work counts as a worker and must be paid at least the minimum wage, so the old Noma arrangement would have been difficult to run here.

A Menu That Resets Every Month

The old Noma ran three long seasons — seafood, vegetable, game and forest. The new one splits the year into twelve, changing the menu monthly. Practically, that means a meal in March and a meal in September are entirely different restaurants. It also puts relentless pressure on the development team, which is precisely the pressure that produced the culture people are now complaining about.

A Review Carried Out In-House

Noma says it conducted an internal audit and has put systems in place so staff are supported and can progress. Management has acknowledged a period of crisis and a need to pay closer attention to individuals. What has not emerged publicly is an independent report with findings anyone outside the company can check — the difference between a promise and an audit trail.

Why the Michelin Stars Are Missing

This is the detail most coverage skates over. Noma was not stripped of its stars as punishment. It simply did not trade enough days in 2026 to qualify for that year's guide, so it fell out of the listing altogether. Its third star only arrived in 2021, and there is nothing structurally stopping inspectors from restoring the rating once the restaurant has a full year of service behind it.

The Restaurant That Announced Its Own Closing

Rewind to January 2023 and Noma told the world it would shut as a restaurant at the end of 2024 and become a test kitchen — a food innovation lab feeding the Noma Projects range of fermented sauces and products. That deadline slipped to 2025. Then came a $1,500-a-head Los Angeles residency that lost sponsors and drew protesters, Redzepi's Instagram apology, and now a full restaurant again in Copenhagen. The lab pivot quietly became a comeback.

What Happens to Noma Next

Three things will tell you whether this is real reform or a rebrand. First, the next Michelin Guide for Denmark: a returning star would signal the food survived the upheaval. Second, staff turnover — if experienced chefs stay under Soto, the culture claims hold up. Third, whether Noma ever publishes anything from that internal review.

If you're planning a trip from the UK, Copenhagen is under two hours from London and the monthly menu means timing matters more than it used to — book for the month whose produce you actually want, not just the first date available. And keep an eye on autumn releases: with tables gone through October, the next real window opens in late 2026.