René Redzepi announced in early 2023 that he was going to close Noma, his “New Nordic” restaurant in Copenhagen, at the end of this year. In the wake of his announcement, news outlets ran overwrought headlines prematurely declaring the death of fine dining. But the acclaimed chef isn’t planning to abandon his world-renowned brand.
Noma’s website features a list of ongoing projects including an R&D “club,” a pop-up dinner in Kyoto later this fall (for $915, flight and hotel not included) and the new Apple TV+ series, Omnivore. Redzepi and the series’ writer, Matt Goulding, focus on and then explore a single topic the way author Mark Kurlansky did in his books Cod (1997) and Salt (2002). Kurlansky intertwines ecological, economic and historical perspectives to enlighten the readers about his subjects. Omnivore takes a similar approach in each one of its eight, half-hour episodes.
Omnivore also runs parallel to Samin Nosrat’s travels in the Netflix series, Salt Fat Acid Heat (2018). Where Nosrat ventured out to Italy, Mexico and Japan, Redzepi and Goulding’s show goes even further afield to Bali, Peru, Djibouti and a half dozen other locations around the globe. The templates are similar. In the “Salt” episode, Nosrat visited Japanese markets and tasted dishes made by local cooks.
Unlike Nosrat, Redzepi doesn’t fly to every country in the docuseries. He’s credited as the narrator and as one of three co-creators. At the top of each episode, viewers hear his voice frame the eight topics—chile, tuna, salt, banana, pig, rice, coffee, corn. But he’s not on the ground interviewing farmers and cooks. After Redzepi provides the context with some of Goulding’s background research, the farmers tell their own stories directly to the camera.
From time to time, the chef appears on camera working with one of the aforementioned ingredients at Noma. There are tantalizing glimpses of his kitchen, his obedient staff and Noma’s disciplined approach to the culinary arts. These brief behind-the-scenes sequences are as close as most of us will ever get to eating at his restaurant. But the chef’s primary task in Omnivore is to act as a charming, front-of-house host.
When Redzepi previously appeared on camera in episodes of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and The Mind of a Chef, he looked like someone who was expressly if not divinely made for the kitchen. He behaves like a painter or a composer when he slices ingredients and arranges them on a plate.
Omnivore finds Redzepi’s brothers- and sisters-in-arms as they engage in their own visionary pursuits. Each person is obsessed, ambitious and wholly devoted to projects that aren’t limited to maintaining their own subsistence. In India, a banana farmer and a rice farmer not only grow their own crops but also unselfishly distribute different varieties of seeds to share with other farmers.
Many of the episodes focus on a family handing down agricultural traditions from one generation to the next. A Rwandan coffee farmer teaches his son how to grow and harvest beans the way his own father did. The pig farmers and makers of Iberian ham involve family members in the business but also acknowledge their part in the community at large—a community that honors and celebrates the centrality of the Iberico pig to the region’s cultural life and livelihood.
In Spain, fishermen hunt bluefin tuna the way their ancestors did. The camera follows them as they embark upon a sea voyage until they cast out their nets or dive into the water. In each episode, Omnivore then shifts and moves away from a hyperlocal approach, from individuals and their families, to follow the bean or pig or fish as it travels through an ever-expanding ecosystem as a commodity.
We see how coffee beans travel from a remote farm in Africa to the espresso machine at our neighborhood cafe. We learn how much an individual tuna sells for at auction, how it’s packed and shipped in ice and then unpacked in kitchens thousands of miles away.
For a post-Noma television career, Redzepi could have turned the camera on himself to enhance or burnish his personal mythology. But Omnivore isn’t a vehicle for yet another celebrity chef. The series shows what an endeavor it is to harvest rice after a monsoon, and the actual price of salt.
“Omnivore” is available for viewing on Apple TV+.
