Ok, so after exhausting quite a bit of material over the last couple of posts, and building this post up, the last of the Noma ones I believe I can dare milk. What is left to say, most of the readership on here knows how a kitchen works, often very closely as I am sure many of you will be reading this in the wee small hours, or on your phones in your splits. Others will simply understand the workings of a kitchen, and am sure you are eager to know what makes this one different to any other kitchen, after all what do they do that makes them 'the best restaurant in the world'
For the answer without the drivel, please feel free to skip down to the bottom, for those of you with a little more time on your hands, I will go into a little detail of the goings on during my meagre week.
My mornings consisted of preparing items for the days services with one of the section 1 chef de parties, these jobs were tiny Parisienne of cucumber, cucumber slices (both for a sea-urchin dish), fine chopped parsley and tarragon, doing some weigh outs, bio-dynamic grains for the scallop dish (55gm), laurum (bleak fish roe, 24gm), running up and down for containers, ice, many other things I cannot recall. Rolling many, many napkins for the langoustine dish. Then came the bane of my existence for my week, give me bloody beech nuts or veal threads anyway of the week, but no I got to polish the windows overlooking the kitchen, nightmare as you have to climb over the benches to do so, and stocks were reducing each day which you had to artfully move whilst the steam from them screwed up every chance of getting the glass crystal clear and spotless. This I'm afraid is about the only job I didn't sink my teeth into and do to the best of my ability, whilst I understand the need of the window being completely spotless, they can stick it, preferably where the sun don't shine. Sorry, shouldn't really go off on one, but you wouldn't believe how long the damn thing takes.
Anyway this would take us until about 11:30 when we had morning briefing, this is where the whole team, front and back of house would discuss the service, this is one of the first points of note, where they rise above the rest, each guest is researched, if you have ever eaten there, rest assured that they will try and find something out about you, whether you give them a heads up or not, if your email has a 'chef' in it, or the domain name on the email is in anyway connected to the food industry as a whole, rest assured they will be looking out for you, trying to know as much as they can so they can spot, especially, industry or industry journos, don't worry if there is nothing about you, you will still get very well looked after. There is a further briefing before evening service. Every member of staff is present, including stagier at this briefing, as often if a guest comes from a country that none of the paid guys come from then a stagier might be asked to be available for a kitchen tour afterwards to assist with translation. I found the depth of detail towards the guests amazing.
Ok so now staff lunch..... Oh that's right, isn't one, chefs divide to their stations, stagiers are assigned duties if working on service, many hands are grabbed to build chestnuts (more on this in a minute), and all else back up to the production areas. Then we would be given our jobs for the afternoon. For me this consisted mostly of pickles.....
7 different vegetables, in 7 different pickles. The sheer amount of these required to cater for up to 80-90 covers a day is staggering, and my requirements for this was instructed in 'layers' a 1.5 litre container, capable of holding 2 'layers' well compacted, each day I prepared a minimum of 4 layers of each vegetable. Pretty time consuming and the bulk of my afternoon work, occasionally I would be helped on days of 4 layers each service, but generally would happily plod with this, to be honest this is the kind of job I like to be given on a stage, similar to the 4kg of tiny morels I was given by Jocky at the fat duck, technically simple to do, so a minimal amount of focus required, which allowed me to be able to watch all else around me, absorbing as much as I could in my short time there.
Ok a small digression at this point for this, to me, the reason for a stage at any restaurant is to gleam as much as you can in your time there, to me this cannot be achieved if you are stuck in a heavily detailed task for hours on end, you will only see the job at hand, missing out on what's going on, watch what's going on and you will more than likely screw up what you are working on, so my advice is take the jobs that the full-timers hate, the more mundane the better (NOT window cleaning, I might add) so you can get a bigger picture, and not just the chervil stems, again more on this in a minute.
Anyway, often just a few minutes before service a small crew of stagier would be asked to build chestnuts. A wonderful dish to eat, and interesting to out together, only available on the 12 course so at least not one per guest was needed, Sam the sous chef would take care of the basic prep of these, already shelled by the production team, he would peel the remaining skin off about a 5 litre container each day, then for each service slice some truly paper thin, and the remainder required into simply very thin slices. Then 4 or 5 of us would take the thinnest ones and put 2 together so they stood to a point, 4 per plate, then some peeled chopped walnuts were sprinkled in the plate, now the fun bit, anywhere between 10-14 pieces of the next thickness were stood as upright as possible (see picture), using the paper thin ones and the walnuts only to hold them, a great laugh as a small army of chefs tried to build these together, concentrating, focused, and often cursing as one ill placed chestnut could send them all crashing down, leaving you to start again, and with the first guests arriving into the restaurant, no time to dally. A few were left out for the opening tables, the rest, cloched with 1 litre containers and transferred through to the walk in, to be collected as required during service. Now can you see the relevance of describing trying to get through the snacks section?
The dish is finished with a micro mustard cress, and a bleak-fish butter sauce then at the table, lovely and with the 'how the hell did they do that' factor
After this, I returned upstairs to continue with pickles, other jobs could intersperse, picking herbs, putting sol stock (seaweed) on, razor clams were a nice distraction one day, some 40kg of them, pulsing with life and a rich aroma of the sea, these were popped out of the shell, trim cleaned and reserved for a future staff meal, the remainder trayed up and frozen, to tenderise, once frozen they were bagged up in 10's and transferred to the main store across the car park (sorry no description, never went there)
Whilst pickles were underway, other chefs would be doing their thing, generally Leo the CDP would be organising the prep for section 1 and spent most of his time, cutting to shape different fruits, vegetables for stagieres to finish, the leeks and the apples for:-
The veg for the pickles, trying to get the stove space to reduce the stocks. A little time now needs to be spent here, explaining James, the AM chef de partie. In the room off to the side of production, was James' domain.
James, during my stage, was the chef de partie in charge of the AM shift, starting at 6am, they fired everything up, and started the Noma ball rolling each day, His team of 4-5 had a list as long as your arm (assuming you the reader have a pretty average length arm that is, if not please envisage this at this point), to collect from the basement at the other end of the park. As well as other duties I have no idea of before 8am, why? Simply because I was sleeping.
During the main part of the day, they cracked on with a number of tasks, from the crisp chicken skin, and rye toast for the sandwich in snacks, to making, drying and slicing the corrugated bread for the toast snacks, James' biggest challenge was that he had control of the only heat sources in production. 4 induction rings, 2 combi ovens. Not to bad perhaps, but up to 30 chefs need stuff cooked, and your stuff is ALWAYS the most important, however you have to convince James, why yours is the most important, my admiration with whoever has that role, you have not only to get your own work done, make most of the juices for the juice pairing menu, and get the huge amount of staff food done, make sure the dishwash area is kept in at least an orderly mess (sorry forgot to say, that's in there too), as he is the one who polices the stove and ovens, if he doesn't agree it it doesn't cook, so out of the chefs to stay on side of, after Rene, this is your man.
So the remainder of the afternoon was generally ensuring enough mis-en-place was in place for the sections to reload for the evening, and to break the back of a few of the more long winded tasks, chervil stems etc. Now I have been using the stalks off herbs as main ingredients in my dishes for some time, the most basic I guess being the Rosemary skewer, but also make infused dressings and oil from fine parsley stems that kind of thing, but chervil stems, they are in a league of their own, very nice to look at and nice to eat, but for a stagier, quite simply a crap job, mundane, but requires all your focus. Each 3branch sprig was removed, then very carefully each leaf is removed leaving as much branch structure as possible, then the leaves..... well, on my chervil stem day, went in the bin as there was no immediate need for them. If you stage here, just make sure you only get one batch to do, very time consuming and by stem number 3, you've learned all you're going to about this task.
At 4:30 the production sous calls a set time to have your work boxed and fridged, then the kitchen has a deep clean, from tile top to floor, only the walk in fridge doesn't get a full going over, not a problem with 20 odd chefs picking a piece of wall, and a further 5 or so armed with squeegees and cloths. After the clean, staff food is served, the only break of the day, officially 30 minutes, but translates into good 45 if you had your afternoon prep sorted. The meals for staff when I was there, whilst a little cauliflower heavy, were simply fantastic, by now, anything would have been great, everyone survives on a diet of stolen cucumber trim and apples all day (and in my case imperfect pickle prep) so you are starving and ready for anything. But in fairness to the AM team, it's lovely simple homely food, pies, curries etc, load your plate high you will need it.
After evening service briefing at 5:45, it was either back up to production for the night jobs, or if you have shown any affinity in it's construction, chestnuts.
I will list the jobs tackled in the evenings a little later on, but just to finish off the timescale of an average day. Prep ensued for the rest of the evening, but the pace a little less frantic, whether this was down to simply winding down by all, still a huge amount of work is done by a huge amount of people, or whether once the morning shift had gone home, there was more space for everybody, the fight for containers was lessened the sheer volume of football throughout the kitchen was less? Not sure of the reason, just that is was less pressured.
Around 10:30 when the kitchen was slowing down from service we would get communication to start drawing to a close, the production sous would call 10-15 minutes, by which time we needed to be finished and fridged ready to clean, some split off to strip the cold room which got it's daily deep clean at this time, which allowed for easier ordering by the chefs. After clear down and service had wound down, there would be a steady stream of guests being shown around the restaurant, one lovely touch is that they would pair the guest up with a chef who had the same native tongue if possible. then once everything had died down, about 11.45 there would be a kitchen meeting, this was to cover any issue discovered during the day, and to avoid future ones, and also to discuss the following lunches guests.
After this we (the stagiers) busted it, but the main team would start their planning for the next day, putting MEP in the right place, hoarding containers, cloths, c-folds. Should you go to noma as a stagier, take some blue wipe down cloths, rags, these are gold dust there, they will love you for it, think of it as a kind of barter system. I digress, sorry. The chefs would sort last minute mis en place. by which time I was in the seven-eleven near my apartment picking out the next days breakfast, and tumbling into my cot. Biggest advice, unless you thrive on no sleep, get accommodation not too far away, it will pay dividends by the end of day three.
The night jobs seemed much less pressured than the day work, with the AM team leaving the building between 7 & 8 pm, left a noticeable hole in the amount of chefs on the floor, the jobs that came out were the longer ones and more time to converse and find out about the colleagues from all over the world, also giving their time for the cause. My first night was beech nuts, mentioned before so I will not labour much further. Outer skins were removed before we got them, so our job was the removal of the hard shell, then toast and rub until White. To be honest this was not a hard job at all, anyone who has tried to peel a perfect walnut half will testify that nuts can be challenging (which we did some of these also, only to be told half way through not to worry, they were for chopping), it is just with the beech nut it's demoralising, myself and 2 other chefs after the first hour, looked at our achievement, we hadn't even peeled enough to cover the bottom of a 1 litre container, many hours later we had a half litre and was deemed enough. Thanks fully the scallops that they were for, were coming in too small so the dish changed and no more were needed all week. That was pretty much Monday evening done, I would love to recount Wednesday evening but as I had lunch, then was given the evening off, I merely typed up a few notes, had a couple of beers, watched a movie and was out, for the lunch post if you missed it, you can find that
HERE
Thursday was an odd day, it ran its course, albeit with enough pickle prep to keep me going for the evening as well, interspersed with prepping a couple of boxes of sea-urchin (lovely), but the mood was odd, maybe it was the fact from 6-11pm I had most of the room to myself, no-one was in the mood to talk so was the longest night, I left that evening wondering what the hell was the bother, quite depressed and pissed off, but so everyone seemed, not the best service by all accounts at the evening meeting, quite a few things could have gone better. just one of those days I guess.
Friday was on the other hand an excellent day, the morning went as usual, with the fun of the stocks on section 1 stoves in desperate need so window cleaning was nigh on impossible with the constant steam of reduction screwing up every wipe. so bugger it I've given it my best shot, it stays like that. usually move up to production, but we had a private table in upstairs that evening. so the prep was a little more for all, and yep, more pickles, quickly (as I could) busted them out, with a little more sea-urchin prep. after tea Matt came up to run the event, he had a couple of black face pigs hanging in the cold room for a week or so, which he pulled everyone to see how he butchered it down, a well held masterclass, the then took the loins and slow roasted them using its own fat, this he incorporated into the evenings party menu, thankfully during the evening he called me over and carved a hunk of it off the rump end for me to try, absolutely incredible.
As stagier in production, when there is an event upstairs, you are actively involved in service as the menu is a very slightly shorter menu (not always) than the main room, including the snacks menu, some could be done ahead of time, but my favourite 'Toast'
Takes a good 3-4 minutes each to prepare, depending on the quality of herbs and skill of chef. so it was all hands on deck, and as Matt and Yannick (production sous) had taken over most of the bench space upstairs was a very nice breather from just prep. we were also very involved in the service of the food to the guest, as in the main restaurant the chefs deliver a majority of the food, not so much the snacks as they are done 4 portions to a plate so the waiters take those, but for each other course, every plate entered the room at the same time, place in front of the guests at the same time. Then all the oohs and aahhh's are in unison. we swiftly vacated the room, so Matt could introduce each dish.
service took up a lot of the evening, and with long chats with Matt about the pork and various other banter about food, didn't get much else done except helping him (lazy git). I also had the opportunity to try dishes not on the menu with my lunch including the razor clam in parsley gel, horseradish, yogurt mousse, sorrel granite and the walnut ice cream. this is why I love my job, truly.
Saturday was mental, truly mental. One of the first things Matt told me was they didn't encourage lunch bookings in the private room, due to the sheer difficulty in logistics making it happen as the production was in full swing during the day. So today was lunch 43, plus 10 private dining. then dinner was 45 plus 12 private dining. absolute maximum covers, so everyone was in full swing, for me the day went pretty much the same we were more cramped and moved into the back room due to the lunch function, but that was fine, about 20 of us in there at one point, then Tom from the snacks decided he wanted a circulation of air to help dry his leathers so opened the window, and with the temperature barely above freezing one by one, we sneaked back into the production kitchen, prepping perched on the edge of benches, using balance only Russian gymnasts have the possibility of achieving. lunch went well, we cleared down, had tea and got ready for evening service. A mammoth chestnut session ensued with most tables on 12 course, Sam Miller the sous not very happy when I asked if there was more chestnuts and still 10 plates short, he seemed a little, well, miffed. with all done I made my way swiftly upstairs before Sam found whoever had not ordered enough chestnuts.
Once upstairs, saw Leo with the obligatory, "what now?" he asked me to pick a few herbs, then do some weigh outs, ok what then? he said that was it, but there was a party again so I could just get involved with that. Ok so picked the herbs, just a few so no worries, 20 recipes of weigh outs for the coming week well should have been a cinch, as it was, however the ingredients to weigh took 5 minutes to gather, the plastic containers to store them in took the rest of the evening, with me eventually having to rob them from sections whilst backs were turned, good fun though. we also had the function running which again Matt looked after, I spent most of my time helping out ( a bit more efficiently than the previous day), again being given some wonderful pork to sample. This time he slow cooked the shoulder from the day before and finishes it in the fat and juices of yesterdays pork, well take all that flavour and condense it into the glaze for a low temp working muscle, Bloody hell it was beyond amazing.
Being the last day of the week before they close for two days, the wind down is more relaxed everyone is planning their weekend jaunts except for the 4 on projects, our last job involved every spare hand. 2 gastro trays of parsley and lovage for oil, blanched and squeezed and in need of being laid out pretty much leaf by leaf to dry at room temp for the weekend. at one point there was 15 of us on the job and still took us until 1am to finish, but was a good laugh with such a big crew.
The final meeting of the week then happened, final plans made, discussion of the following Tuesdays lunch guests, and then to projects. For those not in the know, now is the chance for the Noma chefs to cook their own creations, unlikely that they will ever make the menu, but an opportunity to express themselves Noma style to the whole team. It is not only a chance for them to express themselves, it is expected that 1 member from each section (at least) comes up with a dish each week. 4 plates of each are done up, as there is a big turnout, Best I go through them dish by dish.
first up was Oliver, my CDP from section 1, he had an idea to attempt to replicate the growing conditions on Jersey to get his own crop of Jersey royals to grow, they had been in touch with a farmer who was ploughing seaweed into his soil to get the same soil and the first crop would be ready to test next year, for the dish in question, as the spuds were a little way off, he used the vintage potato from the Noma menu, with some barely cooked clams, pickled seaweed, seawater gel, crown dill seeds and a cappuccino of the clam juice, the story behind it was very interesting and I wish him all success in replicating the potato, although I truly feel Royals may only grow with the flavour they do, because they are grown on Jersey.
Second up was Yo-Bo from section 2, his dish was a slow braised pork tongue cucumber, celery, cauliflower, slices of horseradish, finished with a ham hock glaze, very hearty and also light at the same time, fitted perfectly with the Noma brief, however for a dish in the middle of a 12 course menu after 10 snacks, thought there was simply too much food on the plate.
Third was Matt, the head chef who all week I had seen him prepare the cauliflower for the menu, during the prep he had noticed the cauliflower stalk where the leaves joined the stem had visual appeal, he had squared the stem off, fried it as you would a piece of meat, then held it for 2 hours in a juniper emulsion, he then served it up with some purple cabbage, raw cauliflower, spinach rounds and a sauce made of the split emulsion and some of the pork juices from the last 2 days private dining menus. This dish excelled (he is Head chef after all!) the stalk tastes earthy on first bite, then slowly the juniper comes through on second chew, then a little garlic, flavour deepening with every motion in the mouth, outstanding.
Last up was Carol, who's inspiration for her dessert was honey and mead, she made a mead parfait, covered with a honey gel, served with a rosehip sorbet and crisp bread. this dish has possibilities, but she made the gel with agar and was a little too brittle and the bread tuille was quite thick. these minor issues aside another great dish with clean obvious flavours packed into small packages.
And that was it, a week at the worlds best restaurant done, the option to join the guys to sample the left over wines of the week was there, but as I had booked an early flight, I passed. It was now nearly 3am and needed my bed, even if it was only a couple of hours. I had a few conversations with Matt, Sam and the purchasing sous (and the guy who organises stages) Viktor thanking them and offering my two penneth of advice before heading my way into the very cold night.
There was more to it than I've written, but am tired of typing now and want to get this post out to those who are interested, to you I thank you for your support and for being the reason for me logging this experience, it's lovely to re-live it through words. if this is the first time you have seen this blog, thank you for dropping by, please stick around got some interesting things coming up, such as why I no longer need a stock pit to make the best sauces I have ever tasted, amongst others.
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Thank you, have a great weekend.
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