Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emmanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine.

In each issue, we feature in-depth interviews, narrated essays, and stories, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Thank you. culture and spirituality. David Zilber is a chef and the director of the fermentation lab at Noma in Copenhagen, considered by many to be the best restaurant in the world.

He is co-author along with the Noma founder and chef René Rizepi, of the Noma Guide to

Fermentation.

I had the pleasure of talking with David this fall and hearing about his fermentation work

at the Noma Lab and how the art of preservation is an investment in the future, combining

new techniques with ancient place-based food knowledge.

You direct the fermentation labanoma, the acclaimed Copenhagen-based restaurant run by René Redzeppi.

Perhaps you could start us off and explain both what the fermentation lab is and what role it plays for the restaurant.

So it's not normal for a restaurant to have a fermentation lab.

It's normal for a restaurant to have a dish pit.

It's normal for a restaurant to have a service kitchen.

It's normal for a restaurant to have a bar,

but it's not normal for a restaurant to have a fermentation lab.

But Noma's not a normal restaurant in any sense of the word.

Noma started over 15 years ago now. We're going into our 16th year, as a very simple restaurant

with big ambitions.

I mean, at the start, this was in, I guess, November of 2003, many years before I ever walked

through their doors.

And about the same time, I actually started cooking, Renee had a team of eight people in a sleepy

...