OCTOBER 19, 2024

Dear reader,

Many of chef David Zilber’s creations are barely recognizable as food. From 2016 to 2020, he was the director of the fermenting lab at Noma—widely considered the world’s best restaurant until it closed its doors in 2023—and he cooked up squirrel sauce, moss spritzed with “forest floor essence” and fruit leather moulded into the shape of a beetle. On first glance, these dishes may seem more like the haul of a boy scout’s foraging trip than fine dining, but they’re the result of Zilber’s unparalleled understanding of food, biology and presentation. It’s a skillset that earned him not only the respect and awe of the restaurant world but also of the general public: his book, The Noma Guide to Fermentation, was a New York Times bestseller.

Zilber has expertise beyond the bizarre. Growing up in Don Mills and Scarborough, he mastered the art of frying both plantains and latkes by watching his mother cook. He now has a gig where he can employ the full range of his know-how. This week, he joined Top Chef Canada as a judge for the show’s 11th season. To understand how a rudderless high school student became one of the world’s leading food experts, we’re revisiting Chris Nuttall-Smith’s 2019 profile, “The Wizard of Noma.” 

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—Maddy Mahoney, assistant editor

David Zilber grew up making matzo balls and salt fish with his mom in Scarborough. Now he runs the futuristic fermenting lab at Noma, the world’s best restaurant, concocting weird and wonderful ingredients from bacteria, mould and larvae. How a kid from Toronto is changing the future of food

BY CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH | FEBRUARY 20, 2019

David Zilber looks nothing like your typical kitchen lifer. He wears designer Hammer pants and moonlights as a fashion model as well as an art photographer. These are not, it should be emphasized, normal habits and hobbies among those who toil in the kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants. So maybe it isn’t surprising that his name is getting around. Over the course of just six months, Zilber was called “Noma’s Fermentation Genius” (Vice) and “One of the Food World’s Most Pioneering Figures” (New York magazine). Despite his un-chef-like qualities, Zilber’s polymath mind and unbridled curiosity transformed a former nerd from Toronto into the most revered name in fermentation at the world’s best restaurant. 

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