PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2023

Working the line at Noma

and not leave a legacy of abuse. When you aim as high and push as hard as they did, someone will be left behind, bruised and battered. THE NARRATIVE NOW IS MORE ABOUT THE WORKERS In 2016, I had the pleasure of helping open SingleThread Farm and Inn in Healdsburg, California, one of only 14 three-Michelin-starred restaurants in the U.S. (There are 137 worldwide.) Certainly considered in the same league as Noma in quality and guest experience, SingleThread is a great example of an elite fine dining restaurant with a financially sustainable business plan. Was it easy? No way. Did it take certain individuals thinking outside the box and creatively working with the laws and systems in place? Absolutely. Is it hard to work there? Is it the same pressure I felt at Noma? Yes. The stakes are high and those who work there

expect the best from themselves. But it isn’t sustainable until it works for the individual. I can personally vouch for that. I was the culinary director for the notable southern chef Sean Brock in Nashville during the early part of the pandemic. An advocate for mental wellness, Brock opened a massively expensive undertaking named Audrey, the culmination of his life’s work. Equipped with a state-of-the-art food lab and a second restaurant upstairs named June, Brock is diving head first into what he believes is the future of fine dining: art, history, employee wellness, and innovation. It used to be that fine dining was only about the chef’s ego, but the narrative now is more about the workers. Sustainability for workers. What matters is how they are treated and mentored. Period. Fine dining is very much alive, but it’s certainly riskier. The 1% of restaurants that operate the way Redzepi has with

Prepping squid

Noma may not be truly sustainable, but I hope they don’t go away. It would be like asking the world’s greatest painters to set down their brushes. Let them create art but not create harm. As for me, would I choose to go to Noma again? Absolutely. The energy I absorbed and the friendships I made have lasted to this very day, 11 years later.

Joshua Lanning is a Peoria native and graduate of New York’s French Culinary Institute. He returned to central

Illinois in 2021. His latest restaurant endeavor is the pop-up operation BrightBird Chicken Sandwich Shop in Peoria Heights

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