Kenneth Foong’s eight year journey at Noma ends with tacos
After rising from intern to Head of Fermentation, the chef departs with a joyful send off orchestrated by three of Noma's own, transforming the staff canteen into Rico's Tacos Los Primos for one unforgettable evening.
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Kenneth Foong’s final service at Noma unfolded not with ceremony but with laughter, folded tortillas and the unmistakable scent of slow cooked carnitas rising through the staff canteen. What began eight years ago as an internship evolved into a career of quiet consequence, moving from the line through increasingly complex roles until he emerged as Head of Fermentation, the person whose work with salt, time and microbial transformation had become woven into the restaurant’s intellectual fabric.
To honour his departure, three chefs, Pablo Sotor, Rene Vanapalli and Mario Niculae, built Rico’s Tacos Los Primos within those familiar walls. The transformation was complete: hand painted signage in bold Spanish lettering, hanging chorizo strands, enormous vats of broth simmering on burners, and the unforced joy of a team gathered not to eat formally but to feast together. The neon pink signage read like a portal to a different kind of kitchen entirely, one that exists in defiance of the hushed reverence that typically surrounds fine dining’s highest reaches.
What Foong brought to Noma extended beyond his technical mastery of fermentation. In any restaurant kitchen, curiosity compounds over years into something more valuable than any single dish. The fermentation lab, a space where research becomes dinner, where time is an ingredient and failure is data, was shaped by his questioning mind. His eight years became part of Noma’s ongoing story, the invisible architecture of rigour and play that allows a kitchen to stay restless.
The canteen filled with colleagues holding tacos aloft, the golden light from recessed ceiling spots catching the gathered faces in warm relief. The evening was organised not to sentimentalise departure but to celebrate a chef who arrived as a curious young cook and left having earned the title of trusted collaborator. Noma sent him forward with genuine warmth and the knowledge that his next chapter already holds the seeds of everything he learned here.
Imagery courtesy of Noma (@nomacph).
