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Noma’s Super-Goth Dishes Were Foraged Straight From Hell

A tasting menu for the death-obsessed

A duck wing from Noma that features feathers still in tact. Photo by Ditte Isager for Noma
Hillary Dixler Canavan is Eater's restaurant editor and the author of the publication's debut book, Eater: 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes From the Authority on Where to Eat and Why It Matters (Abrams, September 2023). Her work focuses on dining trends and the people changing the industry — and scouting the next hot restaurant you need to try on Eater's annual Best New Restaurant list.

It’s the 31st of October, and at the single most talked-about fine dining restaurant of our time, the menu is chock full of dark, morbid delights.

Since mid-October, René Redzepi’s revamped Noma has been serving its game and forest menu. Perhaps taking a cue from when fellow foraging enthusiast Alex Atala decapitated a chicken at a culinary conference in Copenhagen, Redzepi has really leaned into the Meat Is Dead Animals aspect of game-eating.

This serving of duck brain cooked in butter and spices inside a duck head alongside a spoon made of duck beak will help you connect with your inner zombie. It’s very “Death Eater does Island Way sorbet.”

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Late night snack included brain, wing, feet

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Behold, a trompe l’oeil of jelly shaped to look like a beetle — complete with insect pins to increase the entomology-box feel.

And now, the piece de resistance: a mallard wing presented to guests with the feathers still on. Per Noma’s comms rep, the dish is a “fried wing of mallard with seaweed butter and arctic thyme salt. It is served in such a way that the guests hold the wing (the feather side) and then eat the fried wing part (which is fried with a sourdough ‘tempura’ batter).”

Honestly, there will be no better Halloween meal served tonight.