When one 3-star door closes, another opens.

David Kinch’s decision last November to close Manresa, his three-Michelinstarred Bay Area restaurant, didn’t garner much national attention at first, but then, a few weeks later, René Redzepi announced that Noma, his hugely influential restaurant in Copenhagen, would be closing to the public at the end of 2024.

- JAY MCINERNEY

That generated enormous international coverage—almost all of which predicted the end of fine dining. Suddenly Kinch’s move was being cited as further evidence that the three-star restaurant experience was on the verge of extinction.

I’ve eaten at both Noma and Manresa, and I will miss both restaurants, but I think the whole death-of-haute-cuisine call is premature. So, for that matter, does Kinch. When I called him a couple of days after Redzepi’s announcement, he was clearly annoyed at having his own story shoehorned into the apocalypse story. He’d been contacted by numerous publications. “They only quoted me when it suited the narrative,” he said.

“We have to completely rethink the industry,” Redzepi told the New York Times when he made his announcement. “This is simply too hard, and we have to work in a different way.” Much as I admire Redzepi, I think it’s a little grandiose to generalize about the entire industry based on one’s own unique business model. Meals at Noma are often accompanied by labor-intensive decorative flourishes created by