A Swiss restaurateur I know contacted me recently, asking for my opinion on Noma and on René Redzepi. It’s a conversation that’s been had many times, in many forms, since the stories broke. But I thought, rather than write her a long message, why not write something that everyone can read?
When the stories about Noma broke, the mistreatment, the pressure, the unpaid stagiaires pushed beyond any reasonable limit, everyone was quick to make René Redzepi the villain. Social media found its target. The verdict came fast.
I couldn’t quite join in. Because I interviewed René. In August 2015, at Noma in Copenhagen. And some of what he told me that afternoon has stayed with me ever since. I met him several times after that, too, and went back to eat at Noma again and again. So when his name became a symbol for everything wrong with the industry, I found myself sitting with something more complicated than an opinion.
This didn’t start with René
Before we talk about René, we need to talk about the kitchen as a world.
Professional kitchens were built on a military model. Brigade structure, absolute hierarchy, no room for questions. You didn’t challenge the chef; you survived him. Screaming was not an exception; it was how things were taught. You were broken down, rebuilt, and told this was the process. That if you couldn’t handle it, you didn’t belong there.
This was not a Noma thing. It was not a Danish thing. It was every country, every kitchen with a serious reputation for decades. The harshness was not separate from the culture; it was the culture.
So when we focus all the blame on one man and one restaurant, we should be honest about what we’re doing. We are putting a face on something that has no face. We are calling a scandal what was, for a very long time, simply how things worked.
Fear creates anger
In 2015, I asked René about leadership. He didn’t hesitate.
“To be sincere, there were times when I was the worst boss you can imagine. I started Noma at a young age, full of confidence and energy. Then I began understanding that I was responsible for everything, and I got scared. Fear creates anger.”
He talked about shouting, like the other chefs he had known. About becoming a father later on and starting to see things differently. About confronting the darkest parts of himself. About how slow and difficult that process was.
This was 2015. Years before any public controversy. He wasn’t being pressed by a journalist with an agenda; we were just talking on a summer afternoon at Noma. He brought this up himself.
I’ve thought about it many times since. He already knew. He had been working on it. And still, what people experienced at Noma was what it was. Knowing something is wrong and actually changing it are two very different things. That gap is where people got hurt, and it’s worth sitting with that honestly rather than rushing past it.
What gets passed on
Here is something worth understanding about how these environments work.
People who are treated badly in their formative years very often reproduce that treatment later, not because they want to cause harm, but because it’s what they learned. It’s what excellence looked like to them. If every great chef you admired ruled through fear, fear starts to feel like the only language that works.
René came up in kitchens where this was simply normal. His mentors were not kind men. And yet he eventually built a staff dining room, a library, open offices, spaces designed deliberately to make Noma feel more human. He told me this was a conscious effort to do things differently. That counts for something.
But these things don’t change cleanly or completely. Old habits sit deep. You can believe in something better and still fall back into old patterns when the pressure is high enough. That’s not an excuse; it’s just how it works, and we won’t stop the cycle if we don’t understand it.
The stagiaire question
The debate about unpaid internships needs more nuance than it usually gets.
I don’t think the principle is wrong; I think the practice often is.
There’s a real parallel between paying university tuition or a course tuition for theoretical knowledge and offering your labour in exchange for practical knowledge inside a great kitchen. If the exchange is genuine, real mentorship, real transmission of skills, real care for the person who gave up their time, it isn’t exploitation. It’s an apprenticeship, and apprenticeships have value.
With Noma, let’s be honest, the exchange was not small. Stagiaires learned, they worked alongside some of the most talented people in the world, and they left with a stamp on their CV that opened every door in the industry. That is worth a lot. The question is whether the human cost was proportionate and whether anyone was actually looking after the people going through it.
What I’d like to see is not the end of the stage, but a proper structure around it. A programme with oversight. Real accountability for the mentor, not just the trainee. Because there are young cooks out there with enormous talent and no connections and no money, who have everything to offer, and they deserve a system that takes that seriously.
I studied architecture at university, but wanted to become a graphic designer. I offered to work for free at the studios of the best designers I could find, to learn from them. They said they had no time for it. So I had to learn on my own. I succeeded and became art director at McCann and Ogilvy, but I so much wished I’d had a chance to learn from somebody great. This kind of exchange, offering your time and labour for the chance to learn from someone exceptional, is not unique to kitchens. It happens across every creative field. The stage is just the kitchen’s version of something that exists everywhere.
What I actually think
Noma has closed to the public. The articles were written. And the conversation that followed was necessary. But somewhere in the noise, something got flattened. René became shorthand for a problem, and the rest of what he is, got lost in that.
The rest of what he is is considerable.
He is the person who made the world look at a pine cone and see a dish. Who sent chefs out into forests and onto coastlines and told them that the answer was already there, in the place they came from. Who changed the conversation about what fine dining could mean, what it could say, who it could involve. The influence he had on a generation of chefs, on how restaurants think about ingredients, seasons, and locality, is not a footnote. It is the main thing.
And the food. The food was exceptional. Some of the most exciting, most unforgettable meals I have ever had. That is why I went back. That is why serious eaters went back. And that is why young chefs from all over the world wanted to be part of it, to be inside that kitchen, to understand how that magic was made. You don’t queue to work for free somewhere ordinary. You do it because what is happening there feels like nothing else in the world.
But the man I sat with in 2015 was already asking hard questions about himself. He had built spaces inside Noma that were meant to make it more humane. He said on the record that fear had driven him and that he didn’t want to be that person anymore. That was years before anyone forced the conversation.
None of that cancels what people went through. I’m not suggesting it should.
Both things are true. And now there is Noma 03 being built, a new model, a new chance. Not to erase what happened, but to build something that carries the vision forward without the damage. He knows what went wrong. That matters.
The question worth asking now is not whether to forgive or condemn. It is whether we can build something better. I think he is trying to. And I think that is worth saying out loud.
As I was finishing this piece, René posted a statement on Instagram. He admitted to shouting, to physical aggression, to reacting in ways he deeply regrets. He spoke of therapy, of stepping away from leading daily service, of still learning. He wrote: “I cannot change who I was then. But I take responsibility for it and will keep doing the work to be better.”
It is the most specific thing he has said publicly. And it confirmed something I have believed since that afternoon at Noma in 2015: that he has known, and that he has been working on it, for a long time. That doesn’t undo what people went through. But it is not nothing either. And with Noma 03 being built, it feels like the beginning of a different chapter, not the end of a story.
Andreja Lajh is the founder of Haut de Gamme, a London-based PR agency for chefs, restaurants, and gourmet food producers. She interviewed René Redzepi at Noma in August 2015. The full interview was published in Dolce Vita magazine and is available in chapters here.
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