Noma Chef René Redzepi Brings His Ingredient List to ‘Omnivore’

Noma chef René Redzepi recently found himself at Whole Foods. In the “bar” aisle of the store, he was in awe of the optionality before him: packaged in compact rectangles were snacks and meals optimized for different nutritional needs.

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“It’s so transformed into this little container. And I mean, it’s super practical — but it also becomes hard to even understand and be connected to a season or to the people that actually grew this for you, to a landscape,” says Redzepi, in New York as part of the press tour for his new Apple TV+ docuseries “Omnivore.” “We make, in many cases, dozens of food decisions every day. And most of those are made by a sense of routine or a sense of urgency.”

“Omnivore” aims to slow things down and reconnect viewers with the source of their food, one ingredient at a time. And in an age when food is cheap, the series makes a case for valuing the systems that make what we eat possible.

“In my opinion, if you’re not connected to food, it’s like you’ve pulled out one of the roots of yourself from the place that you’re from,” adds Redzepi. “Most of us consume whatever, without really pausing to think: what went into this?”

That question — “what went into this?” — led to the creation of “Omnivore,” an eight-part miniseries that is, yes, a food documentary, but also part nature documentary, socio-economic exploration, and philosophical inquiry. Redzepi had been mulling the show concept for many years before linking up with Roads & Kingdoms founder and food journalist Matt Goulding several years ago. Together, the pair set out to create a food documentary that would be highly visual and cultivate a sense of wonder and awe.

Each one-hour episode is focused on a central ingredient: chile, coffee, corn, tuna, rice, banana, pig, and salt.

“We knew we had to have some of those transformational, foundational ingredients that shaped human society,” says Goulding, who previously collaborated with the late Anthony Bourdain. “That’s rice in the East, that’s corn in the West, that’s salt all over. But also, what are the ingredients that may not be essential for living, but are certainly what make life so special for us?”

The series takes viewers on a journey to meet the people who grow, harvest and transform each ingredient.  Each episode was guided by a central question or thesis  — for “Pig,” the question was, “Dear pig, how are you?” For “Rice,” the theme was “we are the weather.”

“Food is an edible expression of the weather,” says Goulding. “It’s sunshine and rain and wind and clouds and all of that. Maybe we don’t pause long enough to think about that. If we are the weather and the food is the weather and the weather is changing, where’s our food going?”

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As the chef of one of the world’s most acclaimed restaurants, Redzepi has fielded many offers to do TV through the years, but for “Omnivore,” his goal was to be in the show as little as possible. “I have not done this because I want to be on TV. I’ve done it because I want to do the show, because I feel it’s important,” says Redzepi. The chef narrates the series and shares personal anecdotes, but rarely appears onscreen, instead opting to focus on the people laboring to bring the ingredients into the world and to consumers.

All eight episodes were released concurrently on Friday and the pair are enthusiastic to continue crossing ingredients off their list, which is far from exhausted: there’s plenty more to explore in future seasons if the show gets renewed.

“Sometimes it takes two or three seasons on a lot of great shows before you start to feel the rhythms and the cadence,” says Goulding.

“’The Bear’ is a good example of that,” adds Redzepi, noting the cumulative momentum of the popular show since it debuted. Redzepi hasn’t watched the series (when you spend your entire day working at a restaurant, the appeal of watching the most stressful moments compressed into 40 minutes hits a little differently during your downtime), but he does make a cameo in the third season.

“I gotta say this,” says Goulding. “Season One, I was watching the first episode right when it came out, before it was really a thing. I recorded it on my phone and I sent it over to [Redzepi] and he was like, ‘what am I watching here?’ I’m like, ‘this is a show, it’s called “The Bear,” and you’re a major plot point in this show.’ And he was like, ‘Huh. OK, is it good?’ I’m like, ‘yep — it’s really good.’”

Although the pair were only in New York for a few days, with little downtime between screenings and Q&As, they had collectively managed to make the most of their limited time. Redzepi had dinner at chef Vikas Khanna’s Indian restaurant Bungalow, a quick lunch at Superiority Burger, and stopped by Los Tacos No. 1; Cosme and Esse Taco had catered a post-screening reception at Metrograph.

Goulding’s culinary highlight of the trip was a New York classic — a bacon, egg and cheese — from a corner bodega. “It was exactly what I needed. Probably the best bite I’ve had this whole trip,” he says.

There was one more dinner on the horizon before a change of scenery. “And then we go to Los Angeles,” says Redzepi. “The show goes on.”

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