There are 27,000 people on the waitlist for a table at Noma Sydney
There are 27,000 people hoping in vain that someone will cancel their table and forfeit their $485 payment.
A Noma spokesman told media the waiting list was offered in case diners cancelled their booking, which sometimes happens at its Copenhagen restaurant because people have to book a table so far in advance.
He confirmed all tables were sold during the initial booking process in October. There are no extra tables to be claimed.
The best way to describe the highly-anticipated Australian pop-up of Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant, which held its first service yesterday in Sydney’s Barangaroo, is with numbers.
2: The number of Michelin stars awarded to Noma Copenhagen, run by head chef René Redzepi.
5500: The number of people who will dine at Noma Australia over the next 10 weeks.
$485: How much the 10-12 course set menu costs (excluding drinks). That amount had to be paid upfront when diners booked a table in October.
4 minutes: The time it took for all tables to sell out.
27,000: The number of people who are on the restaurant’s waiting list.
The pop-up of Copenhagen’s renowned restaurant, in the new Barangaroo development west of the CBD, opened on Tuesday and runs until early April. Tickets for its entire 10-week run sold out within minutes of going on sale late last year.
Harris, the founder and chief executive of the Harris Farm Markets grocery chain, offered his home to Danish chef and co-owner René Redzepi and his family for the duration of their stay in Australia.
Harris said the arrangement came much to the shock of his wife, Catherine. “I’ve always found it’s better to go for forgiveness than permission, and I knew she’d never say yes,” he said.
Redzepi, for his part, moved staff and their families – about 130 people – across the world to a site at the end of the Barangaroo wharf he built from scratch. The test kitchen contingent flew to Australia in mid-December with 400kg of luggage– 100kg for each of the four chefs.
Since the opening of Noma restaurant in 2003, it has topped Restaurant magazine’s prestigious World’s Best Restaurant list in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014.
Mr Redzepi, who is often hailed as the most influential chef in the world, was listed in TIME magazine’s 2012 list of the 100 most influential people on the planet and was named International Chef of the Year at the Lo Mejor de la Gastronomia conference in 2008.
After several unsuccessful attempts to dine at the original Noma in Denmark, anticipation is high for the Harrises’ Tuesday reservation.
“Three or four months before I go to Copenhagen, I try to book the restaurant, and I’ve never even been able to get on the waitlist,” he said.
“That won’t be the case from now on, I think.”
Harris understood that Noma Sydney received 25,000 inquiries before it bookings even opened. “They knew it was going to be swamped
“I have so many friends who had four or five of their staff ready to pounce on their computer when the bookings opened and still missed out.”
Noma will serve about 5,500 meals in total in its time in Australia. One-quarter of the seats were set aside for international tourists under an initiative sponsored by Tourism Australia, Barangaroo developer Lend Lease and Singapore Airlines.
Punters who managed to secure a reservation will pay $485 per head, plus a further $195 each for the matched drinks.
