Scallop Clouds and Ants on a Shrimp: Dinner at Noma in Tokyo Review

It’s dinnertime in Tokyo, and I’m gulping my champagne because the raw, pristine shrimp in front of me is so recently dead that its brain has yet to telegraph this information to the rest of its body. For now it’s all twitching muscle and whirring antennae.

“Don’t be alarmed when you pick it up,” says René Redzepi. The 37-year-old chef at the top of his game has moved here from Denmark to serve a 15-course menu built from Japanese ingredients. He says other things, too, such as where the shrimp comes from and why it's covered in ants, but I don’t hear any of this because I’m still taking in the fact that it's a shrimp covered in ants. It’s like that moment in a horror movie when they pull away the sheet.