A baker who helped shape Americans’ love for sourdough at Tartine in San Francisco is now poised to take over Copenhagen. Richard Hart has teamed up with trailblazer chef René Redzepi to open his own bakery, Hart Bageri, in the city’s Frederiksberg neighborhood.
Like other prominent chefs, Redzepi has been investing in restaurant projects lately. He’s helped friends and former Noma employees launch their own restaurants, including Sanchez, Amass, 108, and Barr in Copenhagen and Inua in Tokyo. (Noma is a partner in Barr and 108, while Redzepi is an investor in the other restaurants, including the new bakery.) Hart Bageri is the latest opening that allows Redzepi to pay it forward, but it marks the first time the Noma chef is a partner in a bakery, and it’s one of his few bets on a chef that didn’t emerge from Noma’s kitchen.
Hart met Redzepi five years ago during a meal at Noma, where “I was amazed by the food and the service,” he says. They met a second time years later in Sydney, where Redzepi was working on his Noma pop-up. He asked Hart if he knew a baker willing to join the Noma team. At the time, Hart, who is originally from London, was content working as head baker at Tartine, where he helped develop many of the world-famous bakery’s recipes. But a few years later he realized his “time with Tartine was coming to an end,” and he emailed Redzepi to see if he was still interested in a baker. “I said my goal was to have a bakery in London or even Paris. [Redzepi] said, ‘Come first to Copenhagen and then we can expand the plans.’ So I’m here,” Hart says.
The opportunity to move to Denmark suddenly seemed like a good one. “It was the perfect place for me to try something new, to take my bakery concept off the drawing board,” he says.
Hart says Redzepi supports him by connecting him to ingredients and suppliers, but when it comes to the baking, Hart has free reign. Hart describes his eponymous bakery as a “Danish bakery” that is “trying to look back for Danish tradition to create something new.” Tartine-style sourdough breads will be on the menu, but Hart is also looking forward to exploring Danish-style breads and pastries. “In the U.S., everybody is crazy about country-style sourdough breads: big open holes, big crusty breads... Here in Denmark, they have a different tradition. They usually prefer rye breads, so it has been challenging and exciting to to something so new,” he says. In addition to operating the storefront bakery, Hart will also supply all the bread for Noma.
To start, Hart Bageri will operate as a take-away bakery offering loaves, pastries, and a variety of viennoiserie. “Don’t expect to find standard pastries, such as pain au chocolat or almond croissant,” Hart says. “We want to serve something new, and we’ve been testing many different things.” Eventually, the bakery will also sell sandwiches and other quick meals.
Hart Bageri will open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Just a half hour before start time, the staff will arrive to the bakery’s open kitchen, which allows visitors to watch the bakers and the huge bread oven in action. On its opening morning, there was already a line around the block.
“I’m looking for connection. I want that our clients can ask us things, talk to us, and really interact,” Hart says. It’s something he has always looked for in his work and one of the things that was missing for him at Tartine. “The business was getting bigger and bigger, and I’m the guy who wants to run his own little bakery, you know?” Now, in Copenhagen, he will.