Chew On This

More than a decade after Noma’s opening, Copenhagen is still the capital of mind-blowing culinary experiences. But have restaurants that aim to provoke gone too far?

- Jeff Gordinier

I have visited thousands of restaurants in my lifetime, but over the summer I got an early peek at the strangest one I’ve ever seen. This happened in Copenhagen. The Danish city has been a vortex of culinary innovation for about 15 years now, thanks to the ripple effect of chef René Redzepi’s Noma. But nothing could have prepared me for Alchemist.

I met 28-year-old chef Rasmus Munk outside what appeared to be a warehouse. We stepped inside and beheld a Roy Lichtenstein–style tableau of New York City street scenes from graffiti artist Lady Aiko. Then we moved into a wine cellar that looked like something out of The Matrix—8,000 bottles stacked three stories high in glass towers with transparent glass floors. Then we ambled into what resembled the interior of an observatory. Diners at Alchemist sit in darkness, at places illuminated by tiny lamps, and gaze upon a domed vista of a sky filled with stars. Munk told me that when the dome was completed, he instructed the designer to go back to the drawing board because he felt that his panorama of the aurora borealis and floating jellyfish was slightly askew.