We Have Reservations at Noma: a Story of Last-Minute Travel

by Lauren Kroger, Luxury Travel Advisor

Credit: Pollen

They say there are “no rules” at Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant that reclaimed the number one spot in the 2021 World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards – widely considered the Oscars of gastronomy. You will find everything from vegetable shawarma to deer brain on Danish chef René Redzepi’s New Nordic menu, and his ingenuity has ensured that the restaurant is perhaps the best-known name in the industry.  

It’s no wonder, then, that when Heather Nevin called to say that she’d secured highly coveted reservations for the restaurant with two weeks’ notice, we sprang into action.  

“I was having dinner with a dear friend who asked me what I wanted to do for my upcoming milestone birthday in October,” Nevin told us. “‘Go to Copenhagen!’  I replied jokingly.  It was a city I’d had plans to visit multiple times before life, and then the pandemic…intervened. My friend looked at me silently for a second.  She then said: ‘I’m taking my Dad to Copenhagen in a couple of weeks to celebrate his 80th birthday. We have reservations at Noma. The table at the restaurant seats four people, and right now there are only three of us going. Do you want to come?’” 

Heather’s answer was absolutely, unequivocally yes. For too long, we were unable to travel the world in search of that perfect bite – whether it was to be found in a 3-Michelin-star restaurant in Copenhagen or a hole-in-the-wall kitchen that is only discovered by word of mouth in Buenos Aires. It is with that same sense of “carpe diem” that so many of our clients have called us to book last-minute trips as borders reopen and restrictions suddenly lift. 

“An airline and hotel reservation, a frantic scramble to renew an expired passport, and a quick review of current travel requirements – and I was off,” Nevin said. “And it was fabulous.” 

While restrictions continue to shift by the minute, we sometimes have no choice but to plan with short notice. During the last two years, our role as advisors has shifted to accommodate that reality. We know that we are now even more adept at leveraging our relationships with global partners and advocating for clients, and that is what makes a flawless trip possible despite short lead times.   

How short is short? In September, Chicago-based clients called Shawna to say: “We just purchased tickets to Florence. We leave tomorrow. Can you help?” The following day, as they checked into The Place Firenze, they signed off an itinerary that snaked through Tuscany and Umbria and ended on the sparkling Tyrrhenian Sea. Our team has also designed trips to Dubai with 96 hours’ notice, Galapagos in a week, and Rwanda in three. This is a continued sign of our times, but the key in every case has been flexibility and a sense of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-fun that only comes with waking up one morning and deciding it’s time to get out there again.  

As Heather says, “Spontaneous decisions are sometimes the best decisions!”