The Copenhagen restaurant has been ranked Best Restaurant in the World by Restaurant magazine for four years since 2010. A fusion of the Danish words “Nordisk” (Nordic) and “mad” (food), Noma has been at the top of its game and its foraged seaweed, for that matter, since 2003.

Now it’s setting up shop in Sydney for 10 weeks over summer. Noma will temporarily shut its restaurant in Copenhagen and settle into its new waterfront home at Barangaroo on Sydney Harbour from January.

The Noma team has pledged to find Australia’s best produce to design a menu, focused on producers who have a "respectful and passionate engagement with the sea and the land”. What’s not to like? I immediately commented on Noma’s Twitter account in my best schoolgirl Danish. Having spent 12 months as a Rotary exchange student in West Jutland during the late 1980s, I can still string together a sentence albeit with a fisherman’s accent.

Noma founders Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer are credited with redefining Nordic Cuisine but my Scandinavian foodie fairytale began in the West Coast fishing village of Ringkobing in the homes of the Larsen, Kristensen and Lybaek families in 1989.

In the Larsen household we sat down to sublime salmon every which way – roe, smoked, cured and baked – straight from the fjord during the peak season. “Not caviar again!” my host sister and I joked. My dentist-cum-chef host father rode his bike to the fish markets, foraged for mushrooms in the forest and finished every meal with a wedge of blue cheese or dark chocolate … and a cigar! We dined on smoked eel but only because he had fishy connections! We never ate out yet every night we ate restaurant quality fare; his succulent pork roast was beyond comparison.

The Kristensens were big believers in Danish Barbecue ie. Fifteen courses cooked on the grill. It’s a trap for new players! We ate barbecued pigeon because they knew farmers in high places. My dentist-cum-chef host father later told me: “You really have to know someone who knows someone to get pigeon in Denmark.” Obviously, he did not know someone because he was more than impressed!

My third set of host parents were a doctor and doctor’s receptionist by day and, by night, hunter and gatherer. Game, duck and pheasant were on high rotation at dinner parties. My host father only shot what they could eat; sustainability was their mantra, like the generations before them. Blackberry tarts, Danish donuts and homemade whipped hot chocolate are forever etched in my foodie memory.

So while I am fascinated with New Nordic Cuisine, I think it will be really hard to top Old Nordic Cuisine.

Having said that, I’m willing to trade my Twitter star for a waterside seat in Sydney!