Dispatches from the Noma Projects
The Pug Bus food correspondent visits the Noma Projects in Silver Lake, where the balsamic flows and the shame does not
The Noma Projects pop-up shop has opened in Silver Lake, a neighborhood northwest of downtown Los Angeles that has spent the better part of two decades trying to be gritty and aspirational at the same time, and has largely succeeded at neither.
The shop is down the block from where the Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant Noma is conducting its American residency, which is the culinary equivalent of a defendant relocating to an adjacent courtroom.
We arrived at eleven. A hand-lettered sign in the window read: Bringing Our Staple Flavors from Copenhagen Alongside New Ones Developed for Our Limited Time in Los Angeles.
A woman in a linen shirt studied the sign the way a person studies a parking ticket. Inside, the merch was arranged with the serene confidence of an organization that has made its peace with itself.
A 3.38-ounce bottle of Barrel Aged Wild Rose Balsamic Vinegar was priced at $150. The label described it as “Noma’s limited, luxurious ode to Italian balsamic, aged in Emilia-Romagna casks and made with wild Danish roses.”
The bottle is roughly the size of a man’s thumb. It sat under a small light that treated it with the same reverence a museum might extend to a papal ring.
We asked a floor associate whether the price included any context for the ongoing labor allegations, the accounts of psychological warfare in the kitchen, or the chef’s farewell video — in which René Redzepi urged his remaining staff to “fight” and “find strength in each other” before boarding a plane to somewhere that was not a Senate hearing room.
The associate smiled in the manner of someone who has been trained to smile through a great many things and said the vinegar was “very special.”
It was not possible to dispute this. At $44 per ounce, it is almost certainly the most expensive thing on the block that is not a security deposit.
Other priceless items available at the Noma Projects pop-up shop include: an 8.4-ounce bottle of Mushroom Garum cooking sauce for $25, which sounds reasonable until you remember what garum is–fermented fish entrails, which the Romans used as currency because they understood the relationship between scarcity and disgust.
For $37, you could acquire a 5.92-ounce container of Pumpkin Seed Praline Spread, described as “nutty.” We thought this was generous.
The merchandise table also offered a Noma Projects baseball cap for $42 and a David Shirley Tote Bag for $26, which features a hand-drawn sketch of a tongue licking a frog. The frog appeared unbothered. It is not clear which party in the Noma organization the frog represents, though our sources suggest it is not the interns.
For the committed, there was a monthly Noma Kaffe subscription at $70, promising two 250-gram bags of coffee per month, curated in “close collaboration with our producer partners across the globe.” This is the most expensive way we know to describe a beverage that is available at the Silver Lake Intelligentsia, which is itself already doing its best.
Outside the Noma Projects pop-up shop, a small group of protesters held signs. They have been there since last month. They did not appear to be purchasing the balsamic. Several of them, it should be noted, were carrying absolutely serviceable tote bags that did not cost $26 and did not have tongues on them.
The Noma shop will remain open through June 26, Thursday through Sunday, until the Los Angeles residency concludes and the whole operation folds quietly back into Copenhagen, where the Test Kitchen and Fermentation Lab will continue their work in an atmosphere that the organization has described as “the strongest and most inspiring it has ever been.”
René Redzepi’s last Instagram post was March 11.
The balsamic, meanwhile, continues to age.
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