What I Ate as an Unpaid Intern at Noma

And some musings on the ethics of unpaid internships in hospitality.

When engineers want to expand their knowledge, they do a master’s degree. When cooks want to upgrade their culinary knowledge or credentials, they do an unpaid internship or a stage, at highly regarded restaurants.

People think you have to be independently wealthy to do an unpaid internship.
While that may be true for many, it isn’t a universal requirement. For the people who don’t come from money, it takes a considerable amount of sacrifice.

There are many cooks who spend months squirreling their minimum wage away, to fund these opportunities to work in these prestigious kitchens in the hopes of taking away culinary education from renowned chefs in lieu of a salary.

In my case, coming from a middle-class family in India, my parents’ willingness to stretch themselves and my readiness to compress my needs made it possible.

My Unpaid Internship at Noma

In 2018, shortly after graduating from culinary school in Hyderabad, I was given the chance to intern at Noma — a restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark that is widely regarded as one of the best in the world, helmed by famed chef René Redzepi.

It was an opportunity of a lifetime that I never thought I’d land.

And my parents put nearly everything on the line to support my dream of wanting to learn the trade of cooking from the “best.”

In a document I signed when I was accepted for the internship, I was told that the interns would be working 37 hours a week, having the chance to experience the restaurant’s operations first-hand and participate in several workshops designed to enrich the intern’s knowledge through informal education.

The document also had a detailed breakdown of different phases of the internship “program” and how the interns would rotate between food production, service and foraging the many local, wild plants.

The interns would supposedly be able to have the opportunity every week to compose a dish and have it be critiqued by their peers as a form of collaborative learning.

I was warned that this was subject to change based on the needs of the interns and the restaurant alike.

I felt excited and lucky to have the opportunity to absorb knowledge from and be trained by one of the best kitchen teams.

I also felt I had a lot to prove because I fought against societal norms to be in a field outside the three most respected and coveted ones in India: that of a doctor, lawyer or engineer.

The Economics of My Unpaid Internship

I landed in Copenhagen in 2018 from Bengaluru as a 21-year-old with 18,000 kroner ($2,850 USD) — a total budget for three months that would barely cover the expenses of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

12,000 kroner ($1,900) of this went to rent for three months. What can one do with the 6,000 kroner left — or 66 kroner a day — for living expenses barring rent?

Not much.

For context, a one-way public transit ticket within the same zone at the time cost 24 kroner. If I had not chosen to bike 5.5km every work day, before and after my 12-16 hour shifts, I would have been left with 18 kroner for all other expenses.

The entire staff were provided 2 family meals daily — a light Japanese-style breakfast and a lunch made by a couple of interns who were chosen weekly, as a supposed opportunity to showcase their talents.

During the first month of my internship, we were also provided a to-go sandwich to take with us (again, made by these interns) at the end of our shift. But, that was quickly discontinued under the premise of interns leaving a mess in the dining hall after alleged repeated infractions despite reprimands.

So, what could I buy for dinner with 18 kroner in my pocket? Not even a McDonald’s sandwich or a Steff Houlberg pølser.

After doing the math, I decided to bike from my Østerbro apartment to Refshaleøen everyday to save that 48 kroner, often skipping dinner so I could sustain myself. I also wanted to try to spend my weekends exploring Copenhagen. That is, when I wasn’t sleeping them away from sheer exhaustion.

I was able to use that money to buy myself groceries. Once a week, I treated myself to one pint of Tuborg beer to go with a Danish hot dog. I saved those treats for Saturdays, after shifts that ended in hours of deep cleaning the kitchen and its equipment with toothbrushes once the last service of the week was over.

Meanwhile, as I was counting my øre, the restaurant was apparently running at a highly profitable level — something I only recently found out after anonymous allegations were sent to Jason Ignacio White on Instagram. According to North Data and Proff, holding companies that René Redzepi is either a board member or director of, have millions of kroner in equity.

The Ethics of Noma’s Unpaid Internship

The contrast is difficult to ignore.

This kitchen was powered in part by an army of unpaid cooks absorbing the cost of their own ambitions, while the publicly available financial reports of these holding companies reflect immense capital.

This doesn’t diminish the extraordinary skill and discipline required to build a globally celebrated restaurant. It is simply an acknowledgment that the prestige attached to such institutions shouldn’t obscure the economic reality borne by those at the bottom rung.

When a single restaurant cycles through 30 unpaid interns at a time in a three month period, and pigeonholes them to singular tasks for the entirety of that time, it becomes clear that their roles are less about being educated and more about utilizing their free labour to sustain profitability at the top. In such a system, those with the least power are asked to shoulder the cost of the work, while the business reaps the benefit.

Unpaid labour being normalized in an industry that is already mostly supported by minimum wage workers, shuts out those who cannot afford the smallest costs as well as those who are unable to make extreme sacrifices as I did just to participate.

While I do not regret the work I did, I regret contributing my efforts to an institution that seemingly so easily leveraged ambition against young workers such as myself who had not yet learned to protect themselves.

The Lessons from My Unpaid Internship

My experience at Noma was like no other.

Precision and discipline were demanded at every turn, but so were silence and invisibility. The criticism was relentless and the smallest mistake could provoke humiliation, or threats of being replaced by another eager intern. It created an environment that was hyper-competitive and emotionally exhausting rather than the marketed learning experience.

Thinking about it reminds me of how small and replaceable I felt within a system that only measured me by what I could give without complaint.

By the end of my internship, I carried not just physical fatigue but also post-traumatic stress, anxiety, a constant need for urgency, and a feeling of always being expendable wherever I worked.

It became clear to me that not only did I bear the cost of my living expenses, I also bore the cost of my labour, time, and physical and mental health.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a hard worker and a hustler. Even till today, I do fulfilling work from time to time for free or low pay.

The difference for me now is awareness. I can tell when to invest my energy and when it’s time to walk away from situations that take my generosity for granted.

This is a privilege I proudly created for myself by building a financial safety net brick by brick, after spending years working for exploitative employers. And those experiences allow me to make the sound decision of never hiring anyone without pay.

I am still learning to step back from perfectionism in every step of my life, after being conditioned in my formative years to measure myself from endless standards I could never fully meet.

Over time, I’ve learned to protect my energy, pay attention to what I’m giving, hold back when I feel like I am providing more than receiving, and recognize that meaningful work and fair treatment are not mutually exclusive.

And lastly, I’m learning how to be less of a machine and more human.

I am proud of what I endured. But this level of endurance shouldn’t be a badge of honour.