Copenhagen’s Noma opens its first café and flavour shop

In Copenhagen’s Refshaleøen neighbourhood, a simple 72 sq m greenhouse – previously the threshold guests crossed before entering Noma (René Redzepi’s three-Michelin-starred culinary sanctum) – has been transformed by OEO Studio into Noma Projects Flavor Shop.

The project presented a very contemporary challenge: how to translate flavour itself, and the laboratory mentality of one of the world’s most experimental kitchens, into physical form?

OEO Studio designs Noma Projects Flavor Shop

‘René was very specific about what he didn’t want,’ explains OEO Studio co-founder Thomas Lykke. ‘He didn’t want a traditional shop or café. He wanted something that captures the laboratory atmosphere, as well as the playfulness, the quirkiness, the nerdiness, and especially the energy of experimentation.’

The result is a study in contrasts, both material and conceptual. Where Noma the restaurant orchestrates a carefully timed sequential experience, the shop is more informal and invites browsing through the full pantry of Noma Projects and Noma Kaffe, to enjoy in the shop or to take home. In keeping with a particularly Danish sensibility that prizes substance over spectacle and practicality over decoration, there’s nothing performative here: OEO Studio has created a space that is simultaneously raw and refined, allowing the materials to speak without shouting.

Paradise granite from Bornholm anchors the material palette in three separate treatments: jet-burned, honed, and chiselled. ‘It’s the same stone, just treated differently,’ Lykke says. ‘You almost feel they are different stones. It’s a bit like how Noma treats raw ingredients to create flavour: depending on what you do with it, it has a distinct expression.’

The parallel between culinary and material transformation runs throughout: burnt bricks provide warmth, Douglas fir treated with linseed oil adds a subtle blue, and hairline stainless steel and brushed aluminium introduce a cooler, more technical and industrial touch.

Most striking, however, is the contradiction between high-tech circularity and traditional craft. Bespoke glass jars by Danish workshop Holmegaard Værk, designed with a laboratory finish but a hand-crafted feel, sit beneath Terra pendant lamps made from Matek, a sustainable material made of coffee shell and wood waste mixed with recycled e-waste.

‘We both have an obsession about the crafted feel in combination with technology,’ says Lykke, ‘and the contrast makes it interesting.’

The centrepiece is an extra-long display table, like a responsive scientific specimen presentation, softened thanks to OEO’s juxtaposition of warm, tactile materials against the cooler, more technical ones. A sculptural pendant with what Lykke describes as an atomic plant aesthetic adds an unexpectedly high-tech accent, its light creating an otherworldly glow.

However, the design’s most memorable aspect may be its newfound openness. The greenhouse reveals the garden, lake, and glimpses of Noma itself, marking a shift in how the restaurant engages with the city beyond its dining room. ‘It’s open to everybody. You can stroll by, go in, touch, go into the garden, have a coffee,’ Lykke says.

This accessibility represents a new chapter for Noma, one that reflects its continual evolution and inventive new coffee programme, which features six baristas and their own in-house roasting operation, as well as a fascinating selection of items from the Noma Projects pantry.

‘They’re taking coffee to the same level as their food,’ says Lykke.

Noma Projects Flavor Shop is open Tuesday-Sunday, 9 am to 6 pm, and until 7 pm on Fridays. It is located at Refshalevej 96, 1432 Indre By, Denmark.