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A Banner Beer Dinner: Lost Abbey at Noma

In 2010, Chef René Redzepi’s Noma bested four-time winner Ferran Adria’s El Bulli to be given the title of Best Restaurant in the World. Now as this is a matter of national pride for the Danes, it did not take long for this news to reach the tiny island of Fanø where I live. Immediately, I became interested in going, but I felt a bit discouraged when I found out that they were not accepting bookings for tables of less than eight people, and even then, the bookings needed to be made six months in advance. So when I heard that they were selling tickets for a Tomme Arthur Port Brewing/Lost Abbey beer dinner at Noma, I knew I had to get in on that action.

Unfortunately, a couple months after booking the dinner, I found out that I was pregnant, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from at least sipping every sample to get the full effect of the symphony of flavors. My husband happily accepted the task of drinking for two, in exchange for my willingness to help him clear his plate of any onions that should make an appearance.

The first beer of the evening was Lost Abbey’s Avant Garde: a malty, clean, slightly sweet biere de garde with lively carbonation that we were given as a welcome drink.

Now finding Noma at night is not the easiest task. It is located in Copenhagen’s picturesque Nyhavn area on a small side street off a small side street in an unassuming building in the middle of a bunch of other unassuming buildings. We got lost in this small network of roads, but when we finally made it inside we were greeted by the very friendly staff, led through the kitchen, out into the rear by the dumpsters, back into the building through a back door and up a flight of stairs to a secondary kitchen and dining room.

In this short amount of time, I must have seen at least fifteen to twenty staff members all happily at work, smiling and saying ‘hello’. All dressed up in their gray and black uniforms, and genuinely grinning ear-to-ear, I thought they might break out into a spirited rendition of the Disney classic “Be Our Guest.”

Upstairs we deposited our coats and stood in the foyer with a glass of Avant Garde while we waited to be seated. Through the glass doors to our left we could see a bustling stainless steel kitchen similar to the one downstairs, and through the glass doors to our right was a neatly laid out table with a charming view of the harbor.

Once seated at a twenty-top table, we were introduced to our chef for the evening, Matt Orlando, and, in a very small-world moment, we learned that our chef, like our brewer, was also from California and had frequented Tomme’s brewery in the not-so-distant past.

Then Tomme got up and talked a bit about the beer we were drinking and told us that this would be the beer served with all eight of our starters. The beer was an inoffensive pairing for the diverse fare that would follow.

The meal quickly began like a magic show. The server informed us that our first appetizer was a malt flatbread and juniper twig that was nestled in amongst the flora of the centerpiece.

Next we were presented with an orange clay dish filled with moss and told to eat it, as our second starter was fried reindeer moss and cep.

After that we got a piece of seabuck thorn ‘leather’ served with pickled rose petals, which was similar to a fruit roll-up in texture and taste.

When that was cleared away out came grandma’s cookie tins filled with shortbread cookies with pork fat and black currant powder with a tiny sprig of pine on top.

My favorite starter of the evening came next, rye bread with lumpfish roe and smoked cream cheese spread and a piece of fried chicken skin on top. It tasted like a delicate bacon sandwich and I probably could have eaten at least a dozen of them.

Another centerpiece, an orange clay flowerpot with little green leaves poking up through the soil, was presented at the table, and we were informed that this was our next course. What it was was fresh radishes in a smoked malt soil with a thick layer of herb crème sauce underneath.

This was followed by another little sandwich served on a thin piece of toast with herbs, smoked cod roe, and vinegar.

A shiny speckled ostrich egg was brought out next. Inside of it were two pickled and smoked quails eggs on a little nest that burst with yolk when you ate them.

Once this delightful parade of apps had concluded we were introduced to our next beer, Lost Abbey’s Red Barn; a spicy saison with black pepper, ginger, orange peel, and grains of paradise (cardamom’s fancy cousin). This was served with bread with sheep milk butter and rendered fat spreads, leeks with jellies, and razor clams with dill and a subtle horseradish snow. The Red Barn’s light spiciness was a nice compliment to the subdued flavors of these dishes.

Our next beer was Devotion, a hoppy Belgian-inspired ale coupled with little clumps of biogenetic grains topped with scallops and beechnuts served in an oil spill of squid ink. This beer was the perfect palate cleanser for food with such a slick, slippery texture. It degreased the layer of oily blackness that coated my tongue at the end of the dish in a very refreshing manner.

Up next was Lost Abbey’s Veritas 008, affectionately nicknamed Arny for its shared flavors with an Arnold Palmer. This beer sat next to an enormous, warm rock topped with a rich, fatty Danish langoustine and small, green dots of raw oyster emulsion. This was one of the best contrasts of flavors between the beer and the food. It conjured up memories of North Carolina summers as the crisp, lemony acidity met with the richness of the seafood.

Onions is the best way to describe the next dish. It was onions about six different ways (much to my husband’s chagrin), served with Lost Abbey’s Amazing Grace, a red wine barrel aged version of Lost and Found. It was pretty interesting to see how this complex beer harmonized with the single scale simplicity of this dish.

Also served with this same beer was a plate full of pickled vegetables with poached bone marrow and a drizzle of ox stock. This provided much more of a contrasting flavor to the onion dish. The pickling really brought out more of the tannic acidity in the beer.

Then it was time for some Port Brewing beer. We started off with some Wipeout IPA, a quintessential West Coast IPA. This crisp, citrusy, dry, piney, unapologetically hoppy beer was paired with a very earthy, almost unctuous braised ox cheek surrounded by beets and apples doused liberally with a thick, oily beet syrup reduction.

After that it was back to the Abbey with a Lost and Found for our first dessert. A very different creature from the barrel aged version, it made a friendly coupling with the pile of moon dust we were told was black berries, walnuts and whipped cream.

The second dessert was a modern take on the traditional Danish øllebrød. This is a piece of rye bread soaked in beer and cooked into a hot porridge then covered in cream. The bread had a really nice barleywine flavor that went really well with the sweet cream and balanced Port Brewing Shark Attack.

The final beer of the evening was Lost Abbey’s 2011 brandy barrel-aged Angels Share. It was like an oak-aged oatmeal raisin cookie in a glass with a delightfully delicate prickling carbonation.

As I left the restaurant, I was happy and well-satiated. It was the most interesting, thought-provoking, imaginative and challenging meal of my life, and this will make it one of the most memorable dinners I will probably ever have.

In the end, one of the most gratifying aspects of the entire experience was seeing beer from that high of a fine dining perspective. If only the entire culinary community would so readily embrace the wide range of flavor possibilities that can be found in the world of beer, then dinners like this wouldn’t have to feel like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and everyone could have such extraordinary experiences.

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