Inside the World’s Best Restaurant

When Gresham Fernandes,Executive Chef for Fine Dining at Impresario Handmade Restaurants,packed his bags for Copenhagen,Denmark,in December,for a three-month culinary residency at Noma,he expected to have the ride of a lifetime. He was right. He was the only Indian chef among a group of 30 from across the world to train at the restaurant. Fernandes three months as a stagiaire (trainee) at the world’s best restaurant changed his outlook towards restaurants,ingredients and food. (Noma has been consistently awarded World’s Best Restaurant title since 2010,by Restaurant magazine,considered the definitive voice on international restaurants).

Given that the 30 chefs were from across continents,one would imagine communication would have been a problem. Fernandes agrees,explaining,”Though most of us didn’t speak others’ languages,the food transcended that division. We’d speak through gestures,draw ingredients on paper,do whatever it took to make ourselves understood. It worked.”

When asked about his experiences while cooking in Noma,Fernandes says it was enervating but enriching. “We used to work more than 15 hours daily,which was exhausting but also incredible. I think the biggest learning was to get organised. I mean,anybody can cook,and a lot of people can cook well,but it’s your organisational skills which determine how good a chef you’ll be,” he says. He is equally enthusiastic about chef René Redzepi,who founded the restaurant in 2004 and has helmed its kitchen since,who Fernandes calls “a genius.

Can we expect any Noma dishes in any of the Smokehouse chains of Delhi and Mumbai that Fernandes heads? He says that,”the flavours of Noma can’t be replicated anywhere else. The chefs source their products locally,and have everything in-house,from their herb garden to their own herds of goats for milk and cheese. Because their ingredients are region-specific,even if you have the recipe of a dish,you cannot recreate it.”