At the beginning of this year, Noma closed down as a full-time restaurant and will reopen as a food lab. A three-star Michelin restaurant, Noma has gathered a number of accolades, including ranking at the top of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2021. The closure signifies something grave: the imminent decline of fine dining.
Weeks later, a critical discussion of Noma, fine dining and the never-ending competition for innovation has caused me to reflect on whether the demands for unyielding perfection from consumers constitute a form of food corruption and caused me to wonder: What is the meaning of food, and how does fine dining fit into it?
Fine dining, often thought of as more elaborate, formal high quality food and environment, is on a self-destructive trajectory. While human creativity is limitless, the physical and mental labor behind every dish is not. Time and time again, fine dining combines raw talent, artistry and a story into each novel dish — chef Heston Blumenthal’s meat fruit is the first to come to mind.
On a plate, on a Michelin guide and on Instagram, these dishes are illustrious, but the scene behind them is a completely different story. Restaurant workers are among the worst-treated and most underpaid workers; if you add on the intensive labor and high expectations that top-rated dining establishments require on a regular basis, something is bound to fall apart. For instance at Noma, interns were free labor until October 2022. The kitchen staff in fine dining restaurants are often paid minimum wage or less until they get exposed on the internet. No one becomes a chef overnight — everyone has to work their way to the top with long hours and no rest on holidays and weekends. An exposé of Willows Inn, a fine dining restaurant on Lummi Island, revealed overwork, sexual harassment, falsey advertised ingredients and other forms of physical abuse. Fine dining is an industry more focused on perfection and forcing people out in an attempt to bring forward revolution after revolution, rather than one that everyone can appreciate. After all, it’s not possible, not to mention completely unsustainable, to continue to push for perfection.
At some point, we must rethink the importance of luxury delicacies: the foie gras, truffles, wagyu steaks and caviars of the world. The price tags above these words might reveal their wealth, but when it comes to truly appreciating the quality and the textures of the food, I doubt many of us can say we really understand.
I’m not absolved of this either. When my family went to London for vacation a couple of years ago, I insisted on trying the beef wellington at one of Gordon Ramsey’s restaurants, Bread Street Kitchen and Bar. The asparagus with Hollandaise sauce might have inspired a new kitchen favorite for me, but the overly rare meat inside the wellington made it hard to chew, and I walked away struggling to say it was enjoyable. I wanted to like it — the flakiness of the puff pastry and the umami taste of the duxelles and steak was a god-tier match in my mind. I wanted something special, a braggable experience and a moment to step into Ramseys’ shoes and feel as though this dish was being prepared just for me. While it’s not completely the same as restaurant critic Tejal Rao’s shrimp and ants experience, at its core is our desire for something so intense, so unexpected, to breathe in the air of luxury just for that moment.
After it all, the next question is always: what’s next?
But food is humble. Food is a blank slate, the start of honest intent and unfiltered creativity. Today, its meaning in our lives — and in mine in particular — is a little more complex.
Food history can trace back the flourishing development of civilizations in an almost unbiased manner, incomparable to the oral and written histories of philosophers and historians from the ancient generations. The discovery of grains like wheat, millet and barley made up a majority of the Sumerian diet since 3000 B.C.E., and by the time the Babylonians took over, the truffle became a royal delicacy. Food history has mapped out agricultural shifts, environmental catastrophes and cultural changes. Fine dining has turned food into an exclusive club, divided by class and status. The realm of haute European cooking might offer a glimpse into new boundaries, but we’ve been shown time and time again by restaurants closing and unseemingly exposés the precarity of walking too close to the edge.
Maybe the simplest solution is a complete overhaul of what fine dining means. There will be no shortage of creatives, chefs who spend every waking moment with flavor pairings surrounding their minds. Make no mistake; the René Redzepis, Anne-Sophie Pics and Heston Blumenthals of the world will continue to find and build places to relocate their talent and their vision. But instead of white tablecloths, candle-lit dining halls and a nine-course meal with no more than a handful of food on each plate, maybe it’s time to bring back the heritage and beauty of food and make it accessible to everyone.
Sophia Ling (24C) is from Carmel, Indiana.
