On the first day of 2016, chef René Redzepi walked into his new kitchen in a construction zone at the end of Sydney’s Barangaroo pier. He arrived at 1 p.m., later than planned, because his wife and two of their three daughters had fevers, and then he had no idea how to catch a water taxi across the harbor from his temporary home in Birchgrove. He was scruffy, wearing a T-shirt, dark jeans, and battered flip-flops, and tan from three weeks in Mexico, where he hadn’t touched a stove. (“The ‘mamás’ cook for us there — best cooks in the world,” said one of the best cooks in the world.) He had recharged on their slow-simmered mole and roadside tacos, and now he was bristling with energy.

Redzepi’s Sydney test-kitchen team was more anxious. They had already been in the city for two weeks, cooking full-tilt 16 hours a day to lay the foundations of this project: moving the culinary juggernaut Noma from Copenhagen to Sydney for a ten-week residency.

There had been a few headaches. They had arrived to a restaurant half-built at an address that didn’t yet exist online. Sinks weren’t working. Neither was the oven. A box of expensive ingredients had disappeared, and storms ripping across Tasmania meant more orders wouldn’t get through. Two leafy nests of gulgulk (green ants) from the north arrived in one box, and it was evident from the carnage that boundary disputes had devolved to warfare; the formic acid behind the ants’ ferocity and tangy coriander-lemongrass-kaffir-lime flavor was completely spent. The abalone suppliers couldn’t be bargained below $35 apiece, so the chefs would have to compose in their heads, Beethoven style, for now. They also needed 2,000 kilos of black currant leaves and branches ($7 per kilo) right away, before the plants grew too woody. In one week, they had racked up almost $6,000 in deliveries.

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