What’s Happening: With the impending closure of Noma as it operates today, chef-owner René Redzepi is turning to TV series like Omnivore and even The Bear to get the world thinking about foodways and hard truths about the restaurant world.

The Download: In 2023, Noma chef-owner René Redzepi stupefied those in step with the rarified world of fine dining when he announced the restaurant’s impending closure. “It’s unsustainable,” he said of the working conditions and financial margins at the heart of top-tier fine dining. Redzepi has since announced that Noma will continue to operate in Copenhagen until spring 2025—an extension from the 2024 closure he had initially shared. And with the debut of Apple TV docuseries Omnivore, as well as a few cameos on The Bear, Redzepi seems to have found a new medium to get his message across.

With the June release of The Bear’s third season, restaurant-pilled viewers got familiar with Redzepi’s face and the Noma compound as Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy Berzatto ponders whether he can stomach life as a chef-owner in fine dining. In the show, the fictional chef reflects on his years spent in the kitchens of Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, and Redzepi as he grapples with the same issues of razor-thin margins and workplace management that the Noma chef has attributed to his decision to close. Omnivore, which Redzepi narrates, peeks into how he thinks about the sourcing and culinary applications of “the purest artisanal forms” of eight hero ingredients: chile, tuna, salt, banana, pig, rice, coffee, and corn.

Each episode focuses on a single ingredient—and the laborious endeavors undertaken by the producers whose generational know-how allows the rest of the world to partake in their gastronomic delights. Redzepi introduces each ingredient before turning the mic and camera over to the artisans who harvest fleur de sel from the west coast of France, grow coffee beans in Rwanda, and steward black-footed pigs through Spain—before they make it to our kitchens, or those of our favorite restaurants.

In Their Own Words: “It’s super practical, but it also becomes hard to even understand and be connected to a season or to the people that actually grew this for you, to a landscape,” Redzepi recently said, reflecting on pre-packaged meals at Whole Foods.

Surface Says: Plenty of parallels have been drawn between Omnivore and other food documentaries—Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and Chef’s Table among them—but it’s Eater’s satirical “Planet Earth But for Food” that lives rent-free in our minds.

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Stephan Jones constantly embarks on resourcing trips for his clients seeking rare vintage furniture from far-flung locales. While the outings helped Jones hone his eye and establish his namesake interiors studio as a resource for discerning aesthetes seeking top-to-bottom transformations of homes with an artful panache, it brought upon a fortunate dilemma: “I fell in love with and started acquiring too much furniture,” Jones tells Surface. After years of selling straight from the showroom floor of his studio, he rebranded and put the most interesting pieces on display, acquiring the high-ceilinged gallery space next to his West Hollywood office.

Newly christened as Stock Studio, the atelier offers an evolving curation of midcentury furnishings, rare objects, and keepsakes from all across Europe, with an emphasis on Northern France and Belgium. It also serves as a platform for emerging talents—pieces by the likes of potters Lukas Weyandt and Lee Kawasaki offer a striking contrast to one-of-a-kind statement pieces like an oak colonnade center table inspired by the royal salt works in Arc-et-Senans, France. Don’t miss the homemade cookies by Jones’s husband Arthur Redman, either. “I think of Stock Studio’s storefront as an extension of my personal space,” Jones says, “[It’s] an outlet to share exceptional objects with the world in an authentic way.”

When: Until Dec. 15

Where: Logan Center Exhibitions, Chicago

What: Developed during her Gray Center Fellowship, the self-taught sculptor reveals a body of monumental rose quartz and precious gemstone works guided by the principle of paraäcademia—a term coined to address knowledge and practices historically excluded from higher education institutions. Each object reflects the living, breathing people German encountered during her residency, embodying Chicago as an energetic locus of human connection.

Just months after celebrating its 15-year anniversary in New York City, and the publication of its Rizzoli monograph, the Australia-born architecture studio Woods Bagot has another milestone to mark: a new CEO. Kay was appointed to the firm’s top job on July 1, succeeding the nine-year tenure of Nik Karalis. She has been a leader at Woods Bagot for the past 25 years, and was promoted to CEO after a 15-year tenure as a director there. She previously helmed the studio’s Sydney and New York offices.

Baina views toweling as a way to subtly layer color and texture in one’s bathroom—and perhaps take one’s mind somewhere else as they prepare for or disconnect from a busy day. The Antipodean brand’s latest colorway, which combines a rich orange-red with a creamy off-white, aims to transport one to a secluded lake house. Defined by Baina’s signature pairing of bold checkerboard with a subtle embroidered gridded check, the terra cotta colors are available on a hand towel, bath towel, bath mat, and the newly introduced Busby Pool Towel, all of which are made in Portugal from organic cotton. $110

Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) was founded in 1966 from the vision of Francesco Morelli. Today, IED is the only higher-education institution in the creative field to have maintained a completely Italian identity over time. IED Group is internationally recognized and located in three countries: Italy, Spain, and Brazil. Every year, IED launches innovative training projects in the fields of design, fashion, visual arts, and communication, developing new forms of learning and designing new models for interpreting the future.

Surface Says: Behind many school-trained creatives is an institution that gave them the framework for their practice—and in Italy, Spain, and Brazil, IED is a top institution for aspiring artists and designers.

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