Hello Friday (the 13th),

I am sure at this point in the week you are wondering what the best headline around Noma’s closure has been.

Friends, it’s in People Magazine: “World's Best Restaurant Noma, Which Often Served Reindeer Penis, Will Close.”

Marketing guy: “Team, we need to work a little harder to tailor our headlines to popular search terms.”

Restaurant News Writer: “You mean like ‘penis’? Because I have a plan there…”

Three quick bits today…

Let’s get to it…

The Burnout – What do you do once you’ve told everyone fine dining is a grind? If you’re René Redzepi, popups and research. If you’re David Kinch, the SF Chronicle’s Elena Kadvany says you open: “Three more restaurants at a splashy new development, it turns out. Kinch, along with baker Avery Ruzicka and partner Andrew Burnham, have leased a 7,100-square-foot building at the Junction, a mixed-use project with retail and apartments at 5011 Los Gatos Blvd., the developer announced Wednesday. They’ll open a second location of Mentone, Kinch’s popular Italian restaurant in Aptos; another Manresa Bread, the hit bakery spin-off led by Ruzicka; and a third, to-be-announced restaurant.”

As a far outside observer of Kinch moves, I have to say, I am not at all surprised by the pivot from fine dining to a group of more low key, steady-revenue concepts. But I am a bit surprised by the move to a Los Gatos development where copywriters for agents Dixie Divine and Doug Ferrari ask the world to “Imagine Possibility” in their pitch?

Michelin Season – True to their trickle, the Michelin Guide NYC did that thing where they announce a handful of as-yet unranked “new additions” to the upcoming book. 14 possible bibs, stars, and plates listed Wednesday here.

Good luck, all!

And last but not least, for TV Fans: Carmy wins – “The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White accepted the award for best performance by an actor in a TV musical or comedy at the 2023 Golden Globes on Tuesday night.” Congrats on what is basically a James Beard award for the TV industry, Allen (what his friends call him)! Details via Carly Thomas in the Hollywood Reporter. Full acceptance speech on YouTube here:

“I may always look stoned, but I am stone cold serious about my gratitude for this award.” - Carmy

And that’s it for today! Except of course for Tuesday’s Family Meal which is copy/pasted below as usual. If you’d like to get Tuesdays’ on Tuesday’s too…

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I’ll see paying subscribers here Tuesday, and everyone else on Friday for next Family Meal, when I will be coming to you from somewhere in northern Luzon in the Philippines. (If you’ve got a good spot in Manila I should go to on my one night there, I’m all ears…)

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or a mixed use project with retail and apartments to andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. If you like Family Meal and want to keep it going, please chip in here. If you got this as a forward, sign up for yourself!

Hello Tuesday,

Did you hear about what happened with Noma? Did you?

Let’s get to it…

The End of an Era? – Presumably you all know by now: Noma is closing. Sort of. I got the news via the NYT push notification that said:

But the truth, per Julia Moskin in the NYT, is that the restaurant won’t close until the end of 2024, and even then none the team will stay on, and Noma will still do popups in Copenhagen and beyond for the foreseeable future. Plans described in vague detail in a “noma 3.0” (of course) blog post.

Moskin was fairly accurate with this analogy: “To put it in soccer terms: Imagine that Manchester United decided to close Old Trafford stadium to fans, though the team would continue to play….

“Noma will become a full-time food laboratory, developing new dishes and products for its e-commerce operation, Noma Projects, and the dining rooms will be open only for periodic pop-ups. [Redzepi’s] role will become something closer to chief creative officer than chef.”

CPG for the hoi polloi; $800 Tokyo residencies for the upper crust!

Still, the most interesting thing about this “closure” is the way it’s being framed by Redzepi and discussed in food media. The breaking news, NYT push notification article about the end of an era for one of the most influential restaurants in the world is almost entirely about how bad that restaurant — and its chef — were for the staff. Said Moskin, “As the human cost of the industry comes under scrutiny, Mr. Redzepi’s headaches have multiplied, with media reporting and online activism critical of Noma’s treatment of foreign workers and reliance on unpaid interns. In October, Noma began paying its interns, adding at least $50,000 to its monthly labor costs.”

Redzepi told Moskin that with this next move, he hopes his team “can prove to the world that you can grow old and be creative and have fun in the industry.” Maybe too little too late, but… Great, and good luck to them!

By the way, I sent my good friend Stanley Tucci a collection of all your tweets saying “who cares about Noma anyway” and he looked at me like:

P.S. - If you want to know how outside-the-food-world 1% types are taking the news, I implore you to listen to tech VC Jason Calacanis describe how Noma is an “attainable” meal even for DoorDash drivers (who would only need to work a few shifts to pay for dinner there), and how Redzepi should charge stages to work there so people would view it as a school and not give him shit for not paying workers. He gets it! They get it!

The Lists – One of the big winners in the Noma closure might be 50 Best, which has gotten a sudden SEO-rush from endless headlines and backlinks reminding readers why the restaurant is called the “best in the world.” Perfect timing for them, since they’re expanding their list portfolio to include… hotels. The inaugural World’s 50 Best hotel list will be revealed at a 50 Best style event this September. Official announcement here. Bloomberg already picked up the story (as will every luxury travel magazine everywhere), so apologies if you hoped 50 Best would go away.

And good luck to everyone with a restaurant in an ultra high-end hotel!

And last but not least: The backstory – And now, a journey of the mind, via Jessica Sidman in the Washingtonian: “Imagine, if you will, a mythical eternal being named Alonzo Bronze who began traveling the globe 700 years ago, trading spices and learning cooking techniques. He and the Bronze people eventually settle on a lush island in modern-day Caribbean, where they live alongside wild cranes, their spirit animals. In this world, it’s not race that matters, but what you have, whether goats or bronze. That’s the story DC native Keem Hughley dreamed up in the depths of the pandemic. It’s the inspiration for Bronze, a first-of-its-kind Afrofuturism restaurant [in Washington, DC] that reimagines the culinary legacy of the African diaspora with a sci-fi history twist.”

Yes! More wild restaurant backstories in 2023! But let’s get weirder…

Oh, you’re mom inspired you to start cooking? Cool. Morgula the Elder Mouse-Snake vomited up feed pellets to help me survive in the winter year, and that’s why we serve spherified alfalfa here. Bon appétit.

And that’s it for today.

I’ll see you all here Friday for next Family Meal.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and send tips and/or what you have, whether goats or bronze to andrew@thisfamilymeal.com. If you like Family Meal and want to keep it going, please chip in here. If you got this as a forward, sign up for yourself!

Family Meal

Michelin teasers, Kinch developments, Carmy…