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Kyoto is a beautiful city. Beautiful and calm, it feels somewhat like a Japanese version of Copenhagen. Everyone cycling around, fantastic regard for pedestrians, brilliant food and currently, of course, NOMA. I am sitting writing this at the ACE Hotel. One thing the Japanese don’t seem to appreciate or facilitate is the opportunity for someone to linger over a computer over a coffee or a cup of tea.
Thankfully, the ACE - as so many already know - accommodates all types of work with their oftentimes comfortable and fashionably iconic desk chairs and fast internet. Nowhere else that I could find cycling around would so happily afford for me the space to sit and write. Certainly, it must also be noted that nowhere else in Kyoto is as good for eves dropping either. Internationals discussing at times idiotic things and at times interesting moments they have experienced around the city. It is, as much as people often like to rag on the hotel, a great place to sit and ‘work’ even on holiday. It’s also entertaining that the NOMA team are taking advantage of the same benefits of the space a few seats down.
Currently, the admin staff for NOMA are working next to me and there are difficulties of dealing with last minute cancellations and the necessary filling seats. I’m sitting here attempting to build up the courage to ask them a practical question about operations - when they have last minute cancellations and need to fill just one seat (1), how do they do it? How do they guarantee, even with a waitlist a million years long1 that every seat in the restaurant will be filled when people are inconsistent and choose not to show? How do they fill the spot when people cancel with good reason last minute?
My intention, of course, is a selfish one. I want a seat at the table. I will ask the question about operations and then I will direct the conversation towards myself. Me. I am here. Here I stand. If you need to fill just one seat - ask me. I will take it. It would be just my kind of luck. To be in Kyoto for a few days, to bump into Rene for having a coffee and then somehow chance upon a seat at the most sought after restaurant in the world right now. That would be some kind of magic. Some kind of miracle. I am sure I could have just the right amount of hutzpah to pull it off. Just the right amount of gaul, of charm, of creative opportunism. Maybe. Maybe. We will see. I have to be careful, at least to begin with to not be seen as listening too hard to the questions that are being answered three seats up. You see they are just too far away for it to be easy for me to full scope of what is going on. Starting a conversation is a risk and requires timing and nuance and a read of the energy across this space that spans less than two meters. The thought is exciting. The thought is mesmerising, intoxicating. A ‘what if’ that would be the basis of a story I could tell for years. I have memories of reading about chefs and restaurant critics who were offered, with 12 hours notice, the chance to dine at one of El Bulli’s final services. They would fly from London, New York ,Rome, wherever they were to get to that table. I would do the same, if I could afford it and I was offered the chance at Noma. In fact, if all goes to plan, I might even be lucky enough to not have to pay for the flight or extra accommodation, instead just the final bill - pairings included alongside the additional dish options2.
What I have had to humbly accept over the last few days is that, regardless of how I might feel about the highest end of fine dining3, I would love to be able to somehow have a seat at NOMA. In that way I am no different to anyone else who is in this city, or in Tokyo or in London or in New York or in Sydney and has the financial capacity to be in Kyoto at the drop of a hat. I want to try it. I want to be one of the special few, one of the ‘chosen’ lot who get to sit in a dining room run the most influential chef of a generation. The most influential chef of my generation. I haven’t experienced it before. I haven’t experienced anything like it before. I cannot remember if I have ever eaten at a restaurant that had been awarded a Michelin star. I was taken to Lyle’s in London for my birthday just after it opened. It didn’t have a star. I ate snacks at The Clove Club but only at the bar. I ate at Gymkhana twice but cannot remember if they retained their star for those years. Certainly I have never been anywhere near NOMA or any of the pop-ups. For my peers and contemporaries it feels as though there is an almost masochistic drive to scratch as many top meals into their bedpost as they possibly can. It seems to be not only a measure of status but as a chef, measure of skill . Spend the money. Get the knowledge. As if the only way to progress and hold relevance is to have the money and therefore the opportunity to own the knowledge.
It feels oddly reminiscent of other artistic or creatively inclined industries. A pay to play mentality. If you can afford to spend time working for free, training at the best arts institutes, travelling, creating, living, then there is a good chance you will ‘succeed’ within the field. I am always drawn back to Eddie Redmayne as an example4. Yes he is a brilliant actor. Yes he is a beautiful looking man. Yes he did his time training and treading the boards to get to where he is. This cannot be taken away. However, he was also an Eton educated young man. The idea of financial failure or the fear of not paying his rent was never a thought that would have ever crossed his mind as he auditioned and auditioned and auditioned and by all accounts failed and failed and failed. To try and to fail, is hard but as hard as it is to get anywhere we must all try and fail - or so some such trite saying goes5. The weight and importance of that failure though is directly proportional to the necessity of financial security, or generally speaking is directly proportional to the fear one holds of not succeeding. The opportunity cost of failure6. If you don’t have fear failure feels less pressing. If you have money, the fear is less present. If you don’t have it, another failure could be the last.
At the highest end cooking is turning into a similar engine room. If you can afford to work for free and pay for accomodation and flights and food and life you can afford to learn. Yes you can learn many other ways. You could do what I did and read books and cook and figure things out yourself. Learn by doing, an autodidactic approach. Learn how and why things work and don’t work on your own dime, in your own time and hope for the best. This is how I learn. I don’t do well in high pressure, pressure cooker environments. I don’t believe I would have succeeded, let alone thrived in a kitchen like NOMA. I also could never have afforded to be there. I prefer the quiet calm of my own space, I prefer the meditation of my own pace. However, as a result I don’t have the calling card of a Michelin starred education. I don’t have the credibility that that brings, the notoriety, the assurance.
I also don’t know what it is like to eat that food. I don’t know whether it would inspire me or shit me. I can’t tell from this distance but I am, without question, jealous of those that do know. I can think of no greater a myth bust than to be able to charm my way into a seat at the most sought after restaurant in the world right now and then to be simply happy with the meal. Yet, I know that wouldn’t be the case. That is the truth. It would be brilliant. It would be a celebration of the last decade of creativity that has come out of Rene’s brain. Especially now he is so much calmer than he is reported to have been in the past.
I bumped into him and his wife a couple of days ago at Weekender Coffee7. He was cheerful, happy, soft skinned8, well rested, humble, very generous with time and conversation - more than happy to trade stories about ‘crazy’ Yuki9. By all accounts a world away from the man described by many to have been cut throat, angry, impatient and callus not that long ago. A world away from the behaviour I explored in this article, at least on the face of it.
There is part of me that feels guilty, while in Japan, for not actively pursuing Michelin started restaurants while I am here. For not going on the hunt for the white whales10 or the rare wines or the experiences that only I could possibly have while in Kyoto or Tokyo or Osaka. Experienced that could and would be used as - much like my description of those above - bragging rights to improve my industry credentials and bolster my ego. I appreciate the technique that goes into this form of cooking and service, I appreciate the skill, I appreciate the dedication and I admire the work done, yet it doesn’t have the same appeal as the thought of eating noodles and rice after the meal at Benu11.
Fine dining isn’t the way I like to eat. That isn't the way I like to travel. Regardless of the advice you might receive when travelling or booking restaurants no-one will ever know what you enjoy eating and drinking as much as you do. While here I took advice from a friend of a friend who works as a food tour guide between Tokyo and Kyoto. She insisted I not miss out on a chicken katsu sandwich shop she never fails to take her tour groups. Best in show she told me, unmissable, life changing. It wasn’t. It was actually entirely mediocre in the senes that it was totally fine but also not at all fine. It was a chicken katsu sandwich on overly toasted brioche with mayonnaise - not kewpie - and tomato sauce and mustard. This isn’t how I like to eat. I don’t want a gentrified, modernised, tourist led version of something unless it happens to be McDonalds12. I prefer my own adventures and Japan is a place where a choose your own adventure approach to travelling really works to the benefit of all travellers13 I take pleasure in chance encounters with restaurants, or food carts or convenience store snacks. I want to eat and really feel like I am eating, filling my stomach my ‘soul’14.
I have a dream, this wild hope that I can snag a seat for for their final service of the pop. That as the service ends there is a ritualistic offering for all of the staff to eat family meal in the dining room, alongside customers. A nod that would tell everyone, regardless of status or wealth - there are guests and there are people who afford your position as a guest. The staff would eat a cracking once in a lifetime family meal and the guests could join in, if they chose. That would be an experience that I would be sad to miss15. Then again, to do that would require NOMA to break down that fourth wall, to showcase all of the staff - to make clear exactly how much work and chaos goes into feeding them for such a short period of time. It would ruin the sense of exclusivity and at its core the spectacle of the event.
At Dandy 3.016 at the end of a busy service, while the restaurant was still often full we would set up a table in the middle of the restaurant, laying it with intention, sit down and eat together, feasting with each other but also among the customers. There would be staff that kept an eye out for bills or dessert orders and the like but the idea was to make it clear that even as service staff we were proud of the place we worked and the food we ate. After all, it was our home, 80 hours a week. It was our family.
That won’t happen at NOMA. There will be a round of applause and a thank you and possibly a speech and I hope some wild sake and Champagne and truth told, for most people that will be enough. For more people that would be heaven. An appropriate and much loved end to an era.
Rene will close NOMA on 20th May 2023. NOMA will close as one of the best restaurants in the world, if not one of the best restaurants in the history of dining. It would embarrass me to admit that I never dined there. That is the truth.
So I took a breath, pushed out my chair and casually approached the admin staff a few seats down. It was a conversation that started out somewhat restrained but eventually I was able to win a few laughs and some warm smiles from the team. They had systems, yes, of course - quite simples ones based on text messages and emails. They did pause to say though that there was always a chance someone might be in the right place at the right time and end up in a seat on a table. That idea, in and of itself is a beautiful ideal to hold onto.
However, don’t hold your breath. For me it ended as just an idea. A lovely one but simply an idea all the same.
I have been told that it is at least 5000 people deep at the moment.
Because really it would be stupid not to eat it all, right? Right.
Which is that I have no interest in it beyond a passing regard.
This is not to take away from or discredit his hard work and talent at all.
’To try and fail, these two things I hate - succeed in this rap game the two things that’s great’ Jay z - Izzo (H.O.V.A)
In so much as if you do fail what else do you lose and if you don’t succeed, what else could you be doing in which you could succeed to achieve a normal level or ‘living.’
Kyoto based roasters and coffee shop, fantastic. Go. Get the one seat in the garden and breathe.
Likely due to a deep knowledge of the Japanese skin care rituals that can be found here - https://japanesetaste.com/blogs/japanese-taste-blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-4-step-japanese-skincare-routine-and-how-it-benefits-your-skin - yes I now subscribe to it. You better believe I do.
Yuki was the sommelier who I took over from at PxFranco before he moved to Copenhagen to be a sommelier at NOMA in 2014.
Although sitting here now, meters away from Moby Dick, in Japan no less - my palette seems to have shifted.
Which is why I admire restaurant Benu - which now has 3 Michelin stars in San Francisco. Chef Cory Lee, after receiving feedback that not so kindly said customers left and we not satisfied, introduced an all you can eat friend rice or friend noodle final course. Eat, drink, be merry.
And boy, after an experience yesterday do I have some new things to say about McDonald’s.
A concept I explore in this article on Tokyo from last week.
Cliche as it is, hold your tongue. My spirit needs something from dining. It is how I cook and it is what I want when someone cooks for me.
It won’t happen. Fact. If it does, I will eat not just my proverbial hat but actually my new favourite hat from a small Japanese cult brand ‘A Elegance Sapeur.’
May it Rest In Peace alongside the gods, the gods, the gods.
Daniel has a Masters in Food Culture from The University of Gastronomic Science in Pollenzo, Italy. He is a writer, a chef, and a recovering restaurateur.