Carolyne Lane

Hi Carolyne! We scheduled this interview for right after you got back from Colombia. How was that trip?

Incredible. I visited six farms in 10 days and even detoured to Peru. It was intense but very special. We’re starting to see the fruits of long-term collaborations, which is exciting, especially since this is the first year we’re roasting coffee.

You mentioned roasting—how has the transition to roasting for Noma been?

I’ve been roasting for a little while. I kind of strong-armed Noma into buying me a sample roaster in 2019. Back then, we were working with Tim Wendelboe. This year, we started roasting ourselves and scaling the production beyond a 3kg roaster. It’s been fantastic. You just have to apply the same principles to it as with any discipline: consistency and holding yourself to a high standard. Earlier this year, we hired Alistair Hesp as head roaster, and with each step, we’re building the right team.

Speaking of expanding the team, yours seems to hail from all over, really!

Yes! I believe the restaurant team represented 24 nationalities at last count, and this diversity is deeply ingrained in our workplace culture. Much of what we do is influenced by our team’s backgrounds and is the product of many hands. Often perceive fine dining as the result of one creative genius directing others, but that’s simply not the reality. An idea may pass through 20 hands before it becomes a dish. This collaborative approach is one of our strengths as a restaurant and as a company. We have developed a rich system for bringing ideas to fruition, which I believe also reflects Danish sensibility. In Denmark, there is a set of principles called Janteloven, which emphasizes cross-collaboration. For example, a Danish CEO might not have a private office but instead share the same workspace as everyone else. That spirit is something we are trying to bring to this new project.

Can you share a favourite example of an idea born out of collaboration between your team members?

During the Covid-19 lockdown, I faced challenges in developing our herbal tea programme, as Denmark’s climate doesn’t yield sugar-rich leaves. Many of the leaves we can grow here pale in comparison to those grown in warmer climates. With suddenly more time on our hands, we began exploring tea production and how to inject more body and complexity into our infusions. There’s a reason we associate rich, sweet flavour profiles like caramel and chocolate with black tea; it’s due to oxidation and fermentation.

I started developing herbal teas by fermenting and oxidizing different leaves. Blackberry leaf was my first real breakthrough. We also had great success with magnolia blossoms. Initially, I was the only one working on this, which limited my production to a season’s worth of tea over the course of a full year. This is where the fermentation lab came into play, and my colleague Mario, who is from China and has a background in traditional tea production, helped to optimize the process and increase our output. Then another colleague joined the lab and suggested that this would make an incredible kombucha. Five years after starting this process, we now have an oxidized fermented magnolia black tea kombucha. It all comes full circle: maybe 10 people contributed to this single beverage.

How do you bring that collaborative spirit into sourcing coffee?

The way we have worked with producers at Noma over the past 20 years has been very collaborative and involved. This is the spirit I bring to my approach with new farmers as the person in charge of sourcing. We want to avoid an extractive colonial mindset and ensure that collaboration is always between two equal parties, and that the positive impact endures even after we leave, in the case of a pop-up.

The notion of service is crucial here. It’s important to communicate and truly see the person you’re interacting with. Sometimes this means breaking the rules. What touched me about the service at Noma is that, in a typical fine dining context, there are a lot of rules you have to follow. But the thing is, adhering to those rules rigidly doesn’t always provide the best experience. The real skill and craft come from being able to intelligently break those rules. This also means letting go, making yourself vulnerable, and giving yourself over to the process. When you do this, people can sense it, and it builds trust.

You mentioned breaking rules—can you share an example related to coffee service?

Two years ago, we changed how we brew coffee at the restaurant. Tim Wendelboe is a regular guest, and he noted that an espresso felt overwhelmingly strong at the end of a meal. I began to question whether our method of brewing coffee—essentially copy-pasted from a specialty coffee shop scenario—was truly the best approach for a restaurant setting. That’s when Tim introduced the idea of creating a coffee concentrate using the espresso machine. We workshopped this concept for nearly two years, and our final method involved extracting up to 25–25 per cent from the coffee—an absurdly high extraction. This certainly breaks a lot of rules, as the orthodox wisdom suggests this would result in terrible coffee. In order to mitigate the effects of such high extraction, we placed a paper AeroPress filter in the portafilter, which increased the flow rate, and by using a very light filter roast. By doing this, you limit the number of bitter compounds extracted from the coffee. We got a super-concentrated shot, which we then diluted to a desired strength of 1.8 per cent. It’s sort of like a very, very, very strong filter coffee. In a restaurant context, when diners have a tired palate, that little bit of extra strength allows them to fully appreciate the coffee without kicking the palate when it’s down. By all accounts, this might not be what a specialty coffee shop would consider a good cup of coffee, but in the restaurant, it becomes tasty and appropriate. Moreover, the fact that we serve it from premade concentrate makes it much more consistent and controllable, and something all staff, regardless of their level of espresso wizardry, can serve at its best.

And how do guests react?

Mostly, it flies under the radar, because it’s simply a tasty cup of coffee, which is what I hoped would happen. Noma gained notoriety for things like not using tablecloths and stripping back unnecessary elements of the fine-dining experience to focus on the ingredients. To me, this inconspicuous cup is a delightful offering, because it provides an elegant conclusion to the menu. The role of the coffee is to gently ease guests after an overwhelming experience.

What about communicating coffee to guests?

A thoughtful experience doesn’t necessarily shout the loudest, but its impact is felt. When guests engage in this kind of experience—where they feel cared for and seen—they become more aware of the humanity involved, including that of the producers. This awareness may not come in the first instant, but as they warm up and become attuned to the possibilities, textures, colours, and tastes, their curiosity about the origins of these things grows. This is particularly challenging with coffee, because the interactions are so brief. On the other hand, coffee is a very simple concept. if we rely on overly technical language, it can alienate people and make them feel like they can’t engage. This is why we avoid specific tasting notes on our coffee bags. We also cater to an international audience; for instance, I might taste gooseberries in a cup of coffee, while my Japanese colleague might taste umeboshi, and my Mexican colleague might taste something completely different. So, we try to use generic language that fosters dialogue, as it’s through conversation that we can truly connect with people and ‘move the needle’.

How do your pair your coffee with the dishes on the menu?

Having a variety of flavours is key because it gives us more options when pairing coffee with food. Currently, our petit four features white chocolate and lemon verbena, which is bright and floral. We are serving is alongside Luis Ortega’s gesha, which has a sort of lemongrass sensation—citric, floral, and a bit herbaceous—that complements the petit four without being an exact match. By focusing on different varieties, we can achieve greater clarity of flavour, making it easier to find the right pairing for specific flavour profiles in the restaurant.

Any favourite pairings that come to mind?

I like to pair a rich, heavy dessert with a coffee that has a juicy body and bright, fruity notes to cut through the dessert heaviness. For instance, we once had a dessert that was a candle made of saffron caramel, which you light and eat, and we paired it with a pink bourbon that effectively cut through the mouth-coating caramel.

With more herbaceous desserts featuring elements like pine, woodruff, and fennel, a creamier, mouth-coating coffee can be a wonderful complement, as these herbaceous flavours often have a bit of a granular texture.

You’ve obviously find a lot of inspiration in food, coffee, and service. What inspires you outside of coffee?

I’m very fortunate that my job takes me to a lot of different countries. I really, really enjoy reading books from the places I visit for work—it just gives me a deeper connection those locations. For example, I read García Márquez just before going to Colombia, where the Magdalena River was referenced. Suddenly, I found myself driving through different coffee regions with the Magdalena River as my companion.

When we buy coffee, we’re not just interacting with the coffee itself; we’re interacting with a whole new place that has its own rules, personality, and culture. Reading García Márquez acquainted me with the literary movement of magical realism, which represents life in a surreal, magical way. What’s particularly interesting is how deeply embedded magical realism is in daily life in Colombia. On my first trip to Colombia, I found myself thinking, ‘this is actually very magically surreal.’ I saw paw prints of an enormous animal pressed into the concrete in Bogotà, a vegetable patch on a coffee farm with one lettuce surrounded by a cloud of hundreds upon hundreds of perfectly white butterflies, and a cat that had fallen asleep on the back of a dog. Even the simple act of planting a seed and expecting it to sprout into life feels magically surreal. The existence of two winters and two summers, along with the incredible biodiversity... all of it was enriched through my engaging with the country’s literature before my trip.

As a Brit, what has it been like to live in Denmark, where coffee is so deeply embedded in the culture?

It’s pretty incredible. I used to work in Germany, where we always struggled to get people to drink coffee black. Not so here. In a garden pop-up we did, we served 400 cups, the majority of which were black. So, you don’t face many of the challenges that most coffee markets do.

It sounds like you’re living the dream, so let me ask a difficult question: What are your dreams for the future?

That’s a lovely question! In the coffee industry, we tend to focus on minute details, down to the hundredth of a gram, right? But sometimes zooming out is really helpful. Had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have said that my dream is exactly what I’m doing: sourcing coffee and building relationships. Right now, I’m acutely aware of how privileged my position is and how incredible it is to represent a company with such a rich history. My dream is just to do it justice, to do a good job, and to be authentically myself throughout the process. If I can do that, then I’m super happy.