I’ve just been to the best restaurant in the world, and I don’t mean my favourite Bradford curry house, or the original Harry Ramsden’s chippy. True, they have their place, but good though they are, they are not the Best Restaurant in the World; this accolade, awarded by Restaurant magazine, belongs to a restaurant called NOMA, in Copenhagen harbour. My daughter Sally is a “foodie”, so to celebrate her milestone birthday we decided to take her to the best there is. This sounds simple, but getting a table there isn’t that easy; when they were awarded the title in 2010, I’m told they had more than 100,000 bookings within 24 hours! They opened the reservation book for March 2011 on 1st December 2010, and were fully booked within hours, including I’m glad to say, a table for the four of us. So we headed off for Denmark in some excitement.
Copenhagen is a beautiful city full of the nicest folk you could meet; we loved it, but can’t wait to return at some time when the sea isn't frozen. “Cold” doesn't begin to describe it. But anyway, we saw the sights, found some nice bars, and practised paying a lot in a number of restaurants, getting ready for the NOMA experience.
To me, service is the key element in the success of any operation. In the UK’s hospitality industry, everyone pays lip-service to service, and some even walk the talk, but often the customer is left with a feeling that something is missing.
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The NOMA customer journey really started as we stepped from the taxi. Two of the waiting staff opened the taxi door with warm greetings, and it was obvious they had been briefed that we had travelled from the UK. As soon as we had touched down at the table, we began to experience the kind of service you can only dream about. NOMA has an army of chefs – I was told 14 were on contract and a further 20 are “stagieurs” – young chefs who work for nothing for three months just to get NOMA on their CV.
It looked to me as if there were about 10 waiters too – and all this in a restaurant with just 34 diners! Apart from naturally being experts in their various fields, they had obviously been very highly trained on how to deal with people, how to put them at their ease, and how to up-sell. This last skill was fine to observe for professional reasons, but fell on fairly stony ground because I had checked my bank account before leaving home!
They proceeded to serve us with eight snacks and twelve courses over four hours, each one a delight on the eye and a surprise to the palate. The dishes were rarely what they first appear to be, and the amount of preparation and science involved in each dish is awesome. There was just one tense moment, when we realised that what we had just eaten was – wait for it – reindeer’s tongue, a dish which probably elicits a different reaction from Danes than from squeamish Yorkshire people. Our trauma obviously registered with the waiter, for within seconds, the head chef was at our table. He didn’t even mention the reindeers tongue, but sat and chatted to us then offered to let us tour the kitchens and meet the chefs after service had finished – in the Best Restaurant in the World! We gasped, grinned, and grasped the opportunity, which was one of the highlights of the experience and definitely made us forget about Rudolph (at least it wasn’t his nose)! They had skilfully turned a negative into a positive. We were treated like long-lost buddies in the kitchens and were even introduced to Ali the pot-washer. Then of course, came the pain of the bill. I did some quick calculations afterwards and worked out that four of the cars I’d owned were cheaper than that bill – all added together.
So I’ll take away the memory of that customer journey, and a restaurant experience that was like going to the opera and the theatre as well as having dinner, and which underlined my belief in the value of service excellence. The thing is, it doesn’t take all those people and a massive bill to produce good service. Good service comes from having the right people, and the right culture in your organisation, and a determination to be the best. If we have all that, we could serve up Bambi on a plate and no-one would bat an eyelid!
