Denmark_Copenhagens-food-scene

Copenhagen’s food scene is packed with labours of love and sustainable surprises

A self-professed introvert explores community-spirited Copenhagen and finds herself in an array of celestial social dining situations

Abigail Blasi visits Copenhagen’s harbour, home to the striking Kaktus Towers student housing | CREDIT Niels Busch

By Abigail Blasi

I’ve always been nervous about taking to two wheels on London’s dog-eat-dog roads, but Copenhagen is a different proposition. It’s flat, with much less motorised traffic, and it’s full of broad cycle lanes. Most people cycle, and they do so in everyday clothes, without a hint of lycra in sight. And wherever I go seems to take 10 to 20 minutes at the most. On this trip, I’m exploring the sociable gastronomy of this thoughtfully designed city. Gliding along beside a mirror-like canal, I’m on my way to some fællesspisning (‘social dining’), in an historic townhouse, Kanalhuset, converted by the founders of Flying Tiger. ‘Social dining’ are words that strike a chill into the heart of this British introvert.

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Communal dining in Christianshavn

My destination is a sunflower-yellow 18th-century mansion facing the canal on one of the small islands that make up the lovely Christianshavn district. It was once a boarding school that trained boys aged five and up to become sailors.

Seven years ago, Suzanne and Lennart Lajboschitz, having stepped back from Flying Tiger, began to renovate it, and they live in one wing. I’m buzzed in from the quiet street and make my way up through hallways that resemble a private members’ club, with antique rugs on polished floorboards. When I reach the dining room on the first floor, the room is already abuzz with the atmosphere of a well-oiled reunion, or a wedding. I take my place on the long trestle tables and to my relief it’s not scary in the least. No one is frosty or glued to their phones. We share a two-course menu of sharing dishes (chicken/aubergine schnitzel, with rice and braised fennel on the side, followed by a berry and cream dessert, for the bargain price of £11.50). My neighbours include a young Dane, Livia, with whom I discuss everything from our respective royal families to her ringside seat at weddings via her town hall job. She confides that she was keen to come here as an alternative to Folkehuset Absalon, another Lajboschitz venture in a converted church, which hosts nightly dinners and games for over 200. I had never before realised the extent of the Danish affection for community-spirited activities, and this was just the beginning.

The historic Kanalhuset hotel, where Abigail enjoyed a meal in the communal dining room | CREDIT Giuseppe Liverino

Communal dining allows you to enjoy great company alongside delicious food | CREDIT Christianshavn

Folkehuset Absalon, a communal dining room housed within a converted church | CREDIT Folkehuset Absalon

A post-industrial wonderland, Refshaleøen

My dinner companions recommend Refshaleøen, north of Christianshavn. Once an island, and a former shipbuilding area, it’s now joined to the larger island of Amager. It’s owned by four pension funds, yet the imagination unleashed here feels like the type usually reserved for festivals or an expo. There’s a natural wine bar-sauna La Banchina; Copenhagen Contemporary, an art gallery in a hangar; and urban farm Øens Have, where I wander through a bucolic tangle of sunflowers, sweet peas, and butterflies. Øens Have shares space with a mushroom farm, Bygaard, where earthen bolsters are polka-dotted by pale fungi, destined for the city’s high-rolling restaurants.

Øens Have, a seasonal restaurant and the largest urban farm in Denmark | CREDIT Giuseppe Liverino

Tacos from one of Reffen’s many food stalls | CREDIT Visit Copenhagen

Reffen, an organic street food market situated in an urban hub | CREDIT Visit Copenahgen

Here, too, is Reffen, an organic street food market with a head-spinning, aromatic variety of cuisines. Repurposed shipping containers are tiled blue and green for the Moroccan stand; painted saffron-orange for the Indian; hung with textiles at the Kurdish barbecue; blue and white for the Greek flatbreads. There’s not a plastic fork in sight. All stalls have to reduce food waste and use organic local ingredients. It’s a swirl of life and colour and a lesson on what can be done with a wasteland.

Baked goods and a secret garden in Vesterbro

The following day, I cycle into Vesterbro, which used to be known for its butchers and the red light district. The sex shops are still here, but the district has long been established as Copenhagen’s hippest. The 1930s buildings of the Meatpacking District have been colonised by independent restaurants, such as US BBQ-style craft-brewers War Pigs, serving marinated roasted meats directly onto the tray. I visit the newly opened branch of the English-born baker Richard Hart and noma founder René Redzepi's Hart Bakery, its counter full of plump cinnamon buns and glorious Danish bread. Someone has recommended that I try a ‘bolle med ost’ (bun with cheese), a ‘famous bakery treat’. I’m amazed to discover that this is simple as it sounds, albeit the very best bun with cheese I’ve ever tasted.

Delicious pastries at Hart Bakery | CREDIT København

BaneGaarden, a wilderness haven where Abigail talks to CCO partner Ida Marie Banke | CREDIT Niels Busch

Fried chicken from a street food stall at BaneGaarden | CREDIT Niels Busch

Only a few minutes bike ride away is magical-feeling reclaimed wilderness BaneGaarden, which offers community dining in summer, hosting crayfish barbecues, quizzes and parties, as well as street food stalls. I’m unsure where the entrance is, asking the way from some waiters on their break, and they gesture further along the path. Seeing the sign for the entrance, I lock up my bike and go in. Going through the gate is a Narnia moment, with a rustic camp in a woodland glade surrounded by century-old wooden barns. BaneGaarden was created from nine 1909 wooden railway hangers, used for storing wood until the 1950s. Amazingly, they were left like this, abandoned for around 70 years, a hidden wilderness close to Copenhagen’s heart.

Ida Marie Banke, who helps run the garden, takes me down a green-framed path cut through the undergrowth. We reach a clearing with a large, double-height chicken coop. Beyond there is a cottage with a slanted roof, the headquarters of the project, and not, as it looks at first sight, the home of Mr Tumnus. We duck back along the path and have some food from the street stalls. I drink raspberry lemonade and dine on fried chicken and mushrooms, created by Matt Orlando, formerly head chef at Noma, and at the vanguard of no-waste cooking. Ida then shows me a beautiful vintage greenhouse, due for destruction before it was rescued from the botanical gardens, and transported here. “We wanted to inspire people to build in a sustainable way,” says Ida, “rather than knocking things down to use the site.” It’s lovely. With everything reused, original and repurposed, BaneGaarden feels like it might have been here a hundred years..

Coffee & shopping in Frederiksberg

Adjoining Vesterbro is the genteel old-money district of Frederiksberg, full of parks and gardens and home to Copenhagen Zoo. It’s good for shopping too, with a street called locally ‘Little Paris’ for its Parisian vibe, streetside tables, an oyster bar, and an esoteric Japanese tea house, the Sing Tehus, ideal if you’re looking for a serene place to duck into for a next-level cup of tea.

If coffee is your preference, then there’s Darcy’s Kaffe, a light-filled, ground-floor cafe that has neighbourhood hangout written all over it. British founder Darcy Millar is surprisingly young, and tells me about how it all started, when he began selling coffees from the back of a Christiania cargo bike. While we talk I try a ‘set’ – two cups set atop each other, with the espresso beneath and the cortado on top. This allows the espresso to keep the scent, and I can inhale it like a fine wine and appreciate the contrast with the creamy cortado on top.

The food here is extraordinary – crunchy granola served with homemade peach compote, clotted-cream-like Greek yoghurt, and fig leaf oil. Darcy tells me they forage from local fig trees and rose bushes, and produce comes from local farms, such as the eggs – served with spiced salt and pickles – from Søagergård, where all animals are allowed to roam. Darcy has just published a book, together with his journalist father, The Instant Coffee Shop, which explains his journey from a cargo bike coffee shop to two cafes. This place was once a dive bar, he tells me, where people might come for their morning shot. ‘‘There’s something about the ease of Copenhagen," he adds. “Part of it is the size of the city, as it’s so easy to connect with people to see and to taste. Most of our deliveries are made by bike.”

Frederiksberg Gardens, one of the largest green spaces in Copenhagen | CREDIT Daniel Rasmussen/Visit Copenhagen

Keramiker Inge Vincents is a studio shop specialising in thinware porcelain | CREDIT Niels Busch

Neighbourhood favourite Darcy’s Kaffe | CREDIT Niels Busch

The gooseberry brioches are a must-try | CREDIT Darcy's Kaffe

Darcy’s Kaffe boasts a unique history, having begun with its founder selling coffees from the back of a cargo bike | CREDIT Darcy's Kaffe

A pheasant garden restaurant, Frederiksberg

For dinner, I find my way through 200-year-old trees and rolling lawns to a white-walled mansion in Frederiksberg Gardens. This is Fasangården (‘the pheasant farm’). My waiter gestures out of the window at the white-washed outbuilding. “That’s where they’d fatten the pheasants, so that the king could hunt them.” You’d never think you were in the middle of the city. There are three adjoining dining rooms, with dazzlingly fabulous wallpaper: the 18th century goes pop.

The restaurant offers casual-yet-elegant fine dining | CREDIT MarieLouise Munkegaard

The charming exterior of Fasangården restaurant | CREDIT MarieLouise Munkegaard

The food is as elegant as the dining rooms, and all around me Danish locals are settled in for lengthy dinners. I start with a crispy buttery amuse bouche decorated with tiny blooms from the garden, followed by a starter of big, fat scallops, allowed to stand out against a delicate sauce of blackcurrant leaf, finger lime, beurre blanc and citrussy seabuckthorn. The home-baked sourdough bread is crusty yet soft, a combination that the Danes get just right, and served with oil and whipped butter. I could eat just that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At the end of the meal, it feels like an adventure, as a park keeper guides me out of the park with a torch, unlocking the gate as if to usher me out back into the real world.

Cinnamon buns & Scandi-Mediterranean in Nørrebro/Nordvest

North of Frederiksberg is multicultural Nørrebro, where I cycle to see Copenhagen’s Grundtvig’s Church, its pale, unadorned arches soaring way above my head, and a reminder of why Copenhagen has been crowned Capital of Architecture for the next three years. From here, it’s an easy detour to an area that I’m told is up and coming, the Nordvest. I stop at Flere Fugle (meaning ‘More Birds’), a bakery and pizzeria, with a little courtyard in front of it, scented by baking and cinnamon. This feels like a local secret, and the owner, a former teacher, tells me they opened because they lived nearby and had no local cafe. It's in a little enclave called ‘Demokrati Garage’, a community space in a former garage.

From here, it’s only a short ride to Jægersborggade in Nørrebro, back near Copenhagen’s central three lakes. Ten years ago, this street was better known for its cannabis dealers and criminality, but you’re now more likely to find a natural wine outlet or some handmade caramel than anything more mind-bending. There’s a high-end vintage boutique, an old-school cap maker, and several antique shops. Descending into a basement shop, I meet Inge Vincents, surrounded by her delicate porcelain vases, eggshell-beautiful minimalist works of art. Some are just out of the on-site kiln. She speaks with perfectly accented English, and holding the porcelain up to the light, it is almost translucent. With another of Copenhagen’s most famous coffee bars at the end of the road, Coffee Collective, this street is, of course, a gastronomic destination, and I finish my odyssey at newly opened Topicàl.

It’s a small basement restaurant where a meal feels simultaneously relaxed and a special occasion. A young, passionate team talk me through every southern Italian-inspired dish, and Neapolitan chef Davide Laudato conjures plate after plate from his open kitchen with deceptive ease. The 10-course choice is vegetarian, where, in dishes such as carbonara, mushroom is teased into service with as much kick as guanciale. I’ve visited a secret garden surrounding historic railway sheds. I’ve braved a social dinner and found it to be fun. I’ve reached epicurean heights on a 10-course vegetarian menu, and sampled the delights of a cheese roll at a Rene Rédzepi-owned bakery. The foodie underbelly of Copenhagen is full of joy, and packed with labours of love and sustainable surprises. My journey has confirmed, without doubt, that Copenhagen is the best place to go for a gastronomic – and a sociable – adventure.

Inside Grundtvig Church, a gorgeous gothic cathedral | CREDIT Niels Busch

Boutiques in buzzing Jægersborggade | CREDIT Niels Busch

A dish at basement restaurant Topicàl | CREDIT Niels Busch

Abigail visits Flere Fugle bakery and speaks with co-owner Andreas Lundberg | CREDIT Niels Busch

The land of everyday wonder

Danes consistently rank among the world's happiest people, and it’s not hard to see why. From the cosiness concept of hygge to a true appreciation of nature, they’ve perfected the art of putting heart and soul into everyday life. Experience it for yourself on a trip to its buzzing capital of Copenhagen and you’re bound to bring that sense of wonder back home with you. Find out more about the spectacular city of Copenhagen at visitcopenhagen.com

Produced by Telegraph Media Group Lead Designer: Victoria Griffiths, Illustrator: Katie Smith, Project Manager: Fannie Szentivanyi, Commissioning Editor: Rupert Murray, Writer: Abigail Blasi, Sub-editor: Tim Cumming, Video and Photography Manager: Alex Kelly, Web Editor: Jasmin Nahar