For anyone wondering if gonzo journalism died with Tom Wolfe, here is a book for you. Imagine a Kool-aid acid trip through Wonderland, but focused on tracking down exotic local ingredients and cooking them in new and exciting ways.
For four years, Jeff Gordinier committed to joining the posse of Chef Rene Redzepi as they travelled the world in search of an elusive grail: authentic, hyper-local cuisine based on any and all sourced and scrounged components.
If you are reading this review, you have doubtless heard of Noma, Chef Rene’s restaurant in Copenhagen, often described as the best restaurant in the world. At the height of its fame, he closed it and embarked on a world-wide odyssey in search of…what? Even he wasn’t sure, but Gordinier tries his best to describe the process and ultimate resolution: a new version of Noma, still in Copenhagen, on a brownfield site on the border of Christiania, the partially autonomous community originally settled by hippies in the 1970’s (Mr. Wolfe, phone home).
The first incarnation of Noma was known for creative use of local ingredients, especially from the coast, and methods such as fermentation of everything that didn’t run away fast enough. It gave rise to the New Nordic school of cuisine; reservations were available only months in advance, and the tab for the prix fixe menu was in “if you have to ask…” territory.
But Chef Rene was unsatisfied. A wildly popular restaurant in Denmark, and world renown, was not enough for him. He sensed that there must be something else, out in the wide world, that he could cook and be gratified. He embarked on a four-year adventure to discover it.
Along the way, he marked his path with a series of pop-ups on three continents. The first was in Tokyo, and the second in Sydney, but there’s only a passing mention of the Japanese adventure in Hungry, since Gordinier did not join the merry band until after that enterprise closed.
Ditto for Australia, but Gordinier makes an effort to find and interview one of Noma Australia’s suppliers of foraged ingredients. The description of some of the dishes on the menu is both tantalizing and terrifying: “Clams, served at room temperature instead of being chilled, underneath a crispy amber scrim of dried crocodile fat. Porridge of wattleseed with saltbrush…Wattleseed, when plucked unripe, contained enough poison to kill you…it had to be aged, like cheese.” Noma Australia’s waiting list had thirty thousand names on it. Thirty thousand folks willing to trust that Redzepi wouldn’t feed them unripe wattleseed.
Much more of the book is dedicated to the planning and standing up of the Tulum pop-up. Expeditions to a dirt-road village in Merida to discover the secret of perfect tortillas, free-form roaming through open-air markets, hiring the best local ingredient scrounger and location spotter, and a last-minute fiscal crisis make for a gripping read for any foodie.
At the end of the book and the odyssey, the culmination of the enterprise is revealed: the debut of the new Noma. Back in Copenhagen, Chef Rene is as happy as he can be, given that nothing is ever perfect, even the best restaurant in the world. But the wild ride it took to get there proves once again that the journey is at least as important as the destination.
Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World, by Jeff Gordinier, Penguin Random House, New York, 2019.
