René Redzepi

In December 2002, when he was 24 years old, Redzepi was contacted by Claus Meyer, who had been offered the opportunity to operate a restaurant at the North Atlantic House, a former 18th-century warehouse which was being turned into a cultural centre for the North Atlantic region. The restaurant, Noma, was opened in 2004 with Redzepi as the head chef. The name is a combination of the Danish words nordisk, which means Nordic, and mad, which means food.

Redzepi first visited El Bulli as a guest in 1998 and subsequently worked there during the 1999 season.

When he was young, Redzepi's family moved to Macedonia and lived in Tetovo, a predominantly ethnic Albanian area, until 1992 – the start of the Yugoslav Wars. Redzepi has said he found life in Macedonia very enjoyable compared to his later time in a small apartment in a not so-great neighborhood in Denmark. In Macedonia, Redzepi lived in a rural area in a large multi-generation house where they ate locally sourced food, mostly vegetarian, and very healthy.

René Redzepi (born 16 December 1977) is a Danish chef and co-owner of the three-Michelin star restaurant Noma in the Christianshavn neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark. His restaurant was voted the best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine's World's Best Restaurants in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2021, and was awarded its third Michelin star in 2021. Redzepi is noted for his work on the reinvention and refinement of a new Nordic cuisine and food that is characterized by inventiveness and clean flavours.

Back in Copenhagen, Redzepi started working at Kong Hans Kælder, which had been one of the city's leading gourmet restaurants since the mid-1970s. In 2001 he spent four months working under Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in California, but returned to Kong Hans Kælder and Copenhagen.