Time.news – The New York Times food critic writes that since he read that Noma will be transformed from an exclusive restaurant into a food experimentation laboratory, he could not help but “think of Namrata Hegde, an unpaid intern who worked in the kitchen of chef René Redzepi for three months, producing fruit beetles”. In fact, every day Hedge rolled out the marmalade, let it solidify and sculpted it into various shapes using the moulds. Then she assembled those shapes to form an almost lifelike beetle: a shiny, three-dimensional creature made of fruit. Most of the time, before dinner, she also assembled 120 perfect specimens and pinned each one in a glass box, ready to be served to the diners.
Comments the critic: “In the past, Ms. Hegde’s work could have been even ignored, but in the midst of what seemed like a shifting sentiment against the cult of fine dining, it instead became a significant detail” because it showed “the unglamorous fatigue of the kitchens of high-end restaurants and to become more like yet another boring day in a factory, the usual repetitive solitary shift on the assembly line”. Tejal Rao, the critic, argues that perhaps this vision does not correspond exactly to what people imagine when they think of high-level cuisine, yet – he notes – “in the world of competitive and refined cuisine – let’s say, about 100 restaurants all over the world – there is a fruit beetle on every menu”. That is, “not a proper fruit beetle, but a series of mind-boggling, technique-driven and labour-intensive dishes. Trophy dishes”.
Similar examples? The melon caviar of El Bulli on the Mediterranean coast of Spainor the fruit with shiny flesh to the Fat Duckin the English countryside, and still theflawless broken egg in Mugaritz, in the Basque Country. The Times comments: “Season after season, year after year of this kind of work and dedication, kitchens operating at a certain level are expected to outdo themselves. To research and develop even wilder and more interesting dishes, to perfect more eccentric and unusual presentations, to reach ingredients that are even more precious and difficult to prepare, to improve one’s service and find new ways to excite VIPs”. However, this kind of work and dedication in the kitchen “requires an enormous amount of work” with more people in tow, “willing to do the hard work and all the more necessary the more elaborate is the vision of fine cuisine and equally of a large-scale art studio”.
According to the newspaper, few institutions such as restaurants and their particular cuisines “have gotten as much attention and attracted money in this particular sector as the annual list of the 50 best restaurants in the world”. Yet since it began in 2002, the 50 Best list has been an unofficial guide to the business.
In conclusion, the critic of the Times concludes: “But now I fear that this type of refined cuisine has really been maintained in order to continually offer more and more, despite the personal cost of those who have to make it”. The result? That more than a decade later and having spent the most years atop the list and earning three Michelin stars, Chef Redzepi called the old model of fine dining “unsustainable” and left many wondering the same thing of his restaurant.