Nordic cuisine, with famous names like Noma and Geranium in Copenhagen but also Faviken in Sweden and Maaemo in Oslo, did not appear from nowhere. These restaurants trace their origin to a shared starting point: The Nordic Kitchen Manifesto of 2004, a collaboration between politics, national and regional government, trade bodies, talent and entrepreneurs.
Last month the best-known example of that broadly built success story, Noma in Copenhagen, closed its doors to continue in another form. What can we learn from this orchestrated masterpiece? The challenge should not be to copy the movement that pushed traditional France, the mother of haute cuisine, into the background. The more interesting question is what happens after a culinary shift like that.
From haute cuisine to Ottolenghi
French cooking was only really embraced once it found its way into daily life. That moment came when Julia Child showed that high-quality dishes could be made outside the professional kitchen too. So the task is not to reproduce this defining dining at the top level, but to ask how this way of cooking can take a broader, more everyday form. Just as we translated French cooking into our own kitchens, we see these northern combinations finding their way onto menus, helped by chefs fanning out who want to share the approach with as many people as possible.
For now this way of cooking stays reserved for a relatively small number of restaurants and chefs who do not shy away from the attention, knowledge and precision it demands: a deep understanding of ingredients, labour-intensive technique and a command of fermentation. In that light it is no surprise that Levantine cooking, like Yotam Ottolenghi's, turns out to be far more accessible for households and restaurant kitchens.
Diners are more conscious about health
The shared values of these defining kitchens are well known by now: locality, seasonality, vegetables in the lead, responsibly caught meat and fish. It is clear we find this important, and at a system level it is confirmed too, among other things by the revised EAT-Lancet guidelines of 2025. The question is then not whether this movement is relevant, but how it lands.
Do we need a new Julia Child to translate defining dining into everyday cooking? Or will new platforms, media and chefs together act as a better emulsifier, so the famous fermentations of the highly skilled find their way into the kitchens and guests of ordinary restaurants? The diner grows more conscious of their own health and the health of the planet, and responding to what drives them is easier than ever, in dishes and in service. What we can borrow from our northern neighbours is this: we have to do it together.
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Thijs Koster
Co-founder, My Treats
