Move Over, El Bulli

A restaurant in Copenhagen called Noma was named the world's best in the annual awards run by The Restaurant magazine, which polls 800 international food critics, writers, and chefs. Cloudberries, mushrooms, and whey are among the ingredients cited in the Telegraph profile of the foraging-driven eatery, which "serves modern interpretations of classic Nordic food, with [chef René] Redzepi refusing to use olive oil, foie gras, sun-dried tomatoes or any other of the key Mediterranean ingredients that have come to dominate haute cuisine in recent decades."

The place sounds like the natural antithesis of the jaw-dropping molecular gastronomy circuses that have dominated the international conversation about haute cuisine in recent years. With dishes such as "pike perch, unripe elderberries, cabbage stem, and watercress," Noma's simplicity and trueness to its northern terroir sounds—in a quiet way—to be quite bold.

Image source: Flickr member tomislavmedak under Creative Commons