December 6, 2021

By Michael Traud 

The City of Copenhagen is the epicenter for the world’s restaurant and food community.  Copenhagen has developed a food tourism market based on its restaurants and the innovation that is going on within their food community.  The trip to Copenhagen was to engage with many of these key restaurants and the food innovators. 

The restaurant Noma was named the Best Restaurant in the World this past year as they also received their third Michelin star (highest rating a restaurant can receive from Michelin).  I was able to secure the highly sought dinner reservations and met with Jason White, the head scientist for their legendary science lab (pictures included).  Jason gave me a personal tour of the science lab.  The goal was to develop this connection to allow our food science students to potentially can co-op there in the future.  Additionally, I had discussion with Jason to have him come to Philadelphia to participate in a future Philly Chef Conference to engage our students and local food community.

The Noma kitchen has produced many other individuals leading food innovation in Copenhagen.  I was able to meet with Lars Williams, founder of Empirical Spirits, about the unique distillation process he employs with his products (pictures included).  Empirical Spirits produces highly unique and specialized spirits and are changing the distillation process as they focus on unique flavor profile.  I also met with Matt Orlando, former head chef at Noma, as his restaurant Amass to discuss his focus on food sustainability and the development of products using food waste (picture of urban farm of Amass included).  Matt has product development lab in his restaurant focused on developing food waste products for commercial purposes.  Both meetings were fruitful as both individuals were interested in hosting students and participating in a future Philly Chef Conference.

Overall, these connections with the leading food and beverage community in the world will allow our students to connect with industry leaders and allows the program to provide access to our local food community to these leaders through their participation in the Philly Chef Conference.

​The food science lab at Noma in Copenhagen. Photos by Michael Traud.