It takes a brave soul to tinker with Vegemite, but no one could ever accuse René Redzepi of lacking pluck.
From to , the chef-patron of Copenhagen’s Noma isn’t backward in coming forward. He’s not afraid of thinking big, either, as evinced by his decision to temporarily relocate Noma from Copenhagen to Sydney for . As was the case when Noma ran its Tokyo pop-up in 2015, Redzepi wasn’t changing cities just to serve Scandinavian food to new diners, but to explore a new region’s cuisine and ingredients, including divisive, savoury spreads.
“As soon as we settled on Australia, I knew we had to do some sort of Vegemite,” says Redzepi. “It’s that one thing that nearly all Aussies seem to crave and really want so much.”
Interestingly, Noma chefs had already been experimenting with yeast as an ingredient, but the Australian pop-up gave the kitchen’s work new urgency. By the time Noma Australia served its first guests, its development team had spent three months working on the dish with varying levels of success. (Redzepi: “We tasted versions of the dish that were horrible.”) Eventually, the kitchen settled on a vegan-friendly mix of brewer’s yeast and heavily reduced celery, carrot and onion juices: a reasonably faithful reproduction of the Aussie original and, once diluted, a terrific dipping sauce for Noma’s much-Instagrammed abalone schnitzel.
Yet despite staying true to tradition, Redzepi’s “noma-mite” still had its detractors.
Would you dip noma's abalone schnitzel in Vegemite? Source: noma
“I don’t think all the Australians were necessarily convinced about it,” says Redzepi. “The problem with Vegemite and the Australian palate is that all Aussies are used to the one flavour. If something diverges a bit from that – even in texture – people say, ‘no, this isn’t right’. It’s one of those things that people have naturally, so I was very, very happy with what we’ve done. We’ll definitely be building on that going forward.”
Could Redzepi have won over more home-town diners by presenting his noma-mite in a more recognisable format, lightly scraped on toast, say? Certainly, but as far as the Danish chef was concerned, bread wasn’t a cultural fit for the noma Australia menu So despite some initial maybe, maybe-not – you can see the team debating the issue below – in the end no bread was served at the noma pop-up.
“Looking at the story of the neighbourhood we were in, I just thought it didn’t fit the neighbourhood and the menu,” he says. “Barangaroo is a very, very historical place that people for thousands of years came to gather seafood and eat it cooked on the fire. It felt as if having a slice of bread in there would be in a way, weird.”
And what does Redzepi think of the distinctly Australian spread? While wife Nadine is a big fan (“She really, really loves it. Buttered toast with Vegemite on it. That makes her happy.”) Redzepi still isn’t convinced.
“I have never understood Vegemite as a delicious, I-crave-this condiment,” recalls Redzepi of his first encounter with Vegemite in 2009. “But I didn’t dislike it, and I don’t dislike it now, either.”
