The Best Restaurants in Copenhagen (Four We've Eaten At, Sorted by the Night You're Having)
The Best Restaurants in Copenhagen (Four We've Eaten At, Sorted by the Night You're Having)
Copenhagen is the city we have eaten our way around most happily. It keeps pulling in the most talented chefs we have come across, and a lot of them are doing the same thing: taking a Danish classic that is a century old and rebuilding it as modern fine dining. We have eaten proper Mexican street tacos here, and we have eaten at some of the world's most notable restaurants here.
These are the four places in Copenhagen we have eaten at and would book again, grouped by the kind of night you are having rather than ranked one to four. They run from a nine-course performance to a brewery with a Texas smoker in it.
If you want the meal you plan the trip around
AOC is in the basement of one of the city's historic mansions, right in the center — an old cellar with vaulted ceilings, an open kitchen and lighting low enough that the candles do most of the work. Nine courses come out of that kitchen, which holds two Michelin stars, and the dish everyone remembers is a potato.
It arrives as a pile of hay wrapped in clay, and you crack it open yourself with the tool they hand you. Inside is one small baked potato, about two bites, golden brown and splitting open at the touch of a knife. The work in that one small thing sets up everything after: a blini-like flatbread with Danish Havgus cheese, a baked onion with elderflower and Baerii Prestige caviar, pigeon breast with cherries, sorrel and smoked marrow. The food is Nordic in the plainest sense — produce that is fresh and in season, out of the land and sea around the city.
The staff are why none of it feels stiff. They joke with you, then describe every nuance of a dish like they are teaching you their craft, and if you get too warm they will let you stand in their walk-in freezer with a glass of champagne. The catch is money. The wine pairing runs to nine glasses, and the juice pairing is 600kr — really, juice for 600kr? I ordered both anyway, and the juice was worth it: pressed fresh for each course, sharp enough to make the flavors in the food more pronounced.
“This is not a place for a quick bite to eat, it's a performance, an edible show.
If you want the view to be part of dinner
Trio is the third restaurant from the AOC group and the newest project from Søren Selin, the chef behind that two-star kitchen. It sits on the tenth and top floor of Axel Towers — five connected towers clad in wood — with no sign on the door. Find the right tower, take the elevator up, and it opens onto a dark room busy with staff and diners: concrete walls, heavy curtains, wooden tables, candles, windows along every exterior side. Where you sit decides what you see, so ask for a window when you book.
Head chef Simon Thrane plates like someone is timing him. The best thing we ate was his monkfish: he poured the bread sauce over it himself, slowly and on purpose, so every bite would land the way he wanted — sauce, crunch and fish together, the crunch from diced apple and capers, a celeriac purée alongside to scoop it up with. Before that came small bites, including a lobster roll on a fried bun and something that can only be described as a grilled cheese sandwich with truffle cream cheese. After, thin-sliced pear with juniper ice cream.
Who it is for: the modern, high-up, concrete-and-glass version of a Copenhagen tasting menu, the opposite of a candlelit cellar — if the cellar is the night you want, book AOC instead. They altered the menu for my pregnancy without fuss, and Gobo, the head bartender, made me the first mock cocktail I have ever not minded drinking. One more thing: use the bathroom nearest the window. That is all I am going to say about it.
If you want lunch done properly
Lunch here means smørrebrød — the Danish open-faced sandwich, at its most basic rye bread spread with butter. Aamanns 1921 is where to eat the careful version. Adam Aamann built the brand up from a takeaway deli, and this room sits off a courtyard in the center of town: white walls, high ceilings, barely any decoration, and a bar backed by shelves of homemade snaps — flavored Danish spirit — in jars steeped with herbs, fruit and vegetables.
We let the chef choose our menu and got course after course, each sitting on its own rectangular slab of bread, under toppings like pork crackling, smoked Icelandic salmon, heirloom tomatoes, crisp apples and pickled herring. The rye and wheat are milled at the restaurant's own mill, and the herring is marinated for six to twelve months. Aamann makes the soap in the bathroom too, which tells you how much of this he wants his hands on. Two honest notes: the menu changes often, so don't arrive attached to one topping, and the prices are good — not a sentence we get to write much on this list.
If you want beer and barbecue
WarPigs is a brewpub from the breweries Mikkeller and 3 Floyds, and Texas barbecue was the last thing we expected to eat in Copenhagen. Andrew Hroza, previously the chef for Van Halen and Slipknot, smokes the meat for 12 to 14 hours, until it falls off the bone: brisket, beef ribs, hot links, spareribs, pork shoulder, chicken and a run of sides. Order a mixture and let the kitchen tell you what is best. Our one regret is skipping the mac and cheese, which looked like perfection in noodle form.
The beer still steals it — 20 taps refreshed constantly, so the list is never the same twice, and if you know what a good IPA is you will be happy standing in front of it. If beer isn't your thing, the cocktails and sodas get the same care. Be honest with yourself first, though: this is a room built for meat eaters and people who take a well-crafted beer seriously. If that is neither of you, it is the wrong night out.
How we would actually plan the eating
Book AOC first, because it is the night the rest of the trip bends around. Save Trio for when you want a modern room and the city underneath you instead of a cellar, and ask for a window when you book. Aamanns is lunch, and the clearest example we know of a Danish classic rebuilt as fine dining. And WarPigs is what you do after two tasting menus in a row, when what you want is brisket and a cold beer.
