Creative Cuisine in Copenhagen

Located in Copenhagen’s lively and eclectic Christianshavn is Restaurant Magazine’s 2010, 2011 and 2012 winner for Best Restaurant. Dining at Noma is a must-have experience in Copenhagen, and it’s also a good enough reason to plan a trip to this delightful city.

As soon as I stepped inside, I was led through the kitchen and behind the building, then back in through another door and up a flight of stairs.

In this short time, I must have seen around a dozen staff members hard at work. All were dressed in crisp, gray and black uniforms, and all were smiling.

Once upstairs, I removed my coat and paused in the warm, wooden foyer. Through glass doors to my left I could see the busy stainless steel kitchen, and through glass doors to my right was a table with a moonlit view of the harbor.

Denmark is a hidden treasure of Europe. Aside from top-notch cuisine, Denmark's also famous for being one of the happiest countries in the world, and I think the secret to that just might be in the food.

The meal began like a magic show. My server informed me the first bites, a malt bread twig and fried moss, were already on the table inside the centerpiece mostly made of sticks.

When I had eaten all the edible bits, out came grandma’s colorful tins filled with shortbread cookies, topped with pork fat, black currant powder and tiny springs of pine.

My favorite mouthful of the evening came next, crispy rye bread with lumpfish roe, smoked cream cheese and a piece of fried chicken skin on top.

Then small green sprouts in an orange clay pot were presented at the table, and I was informed this was also a course—raw radishes in a smoked malt and herb crème soil.

The empty pot was replaced by a shiny, speckled ostrich egg. Inside this egg was a little nest holding two pickled and smoked quails eggs. The eggs were beautifully cooked and burst with flavorful yoke when you ate them.

Next the waiter hauled out a warm, toaster-sized rock with a rich, fatty Danish langoustine and small, green dots of raw oyster emulsion on top.

Dessert was a modern take on traditional Danish øllebrød. This is a piece of rye bread soaked in beer and cooked into a hot porridge then covered in cream. The bread’s barleywine flavor went well with the sweet, citrusy cream.

At the end of the meal, I was well satisfied. This meal had fed both my sophisticated, adult appetite and my inner child’s hunger for whimsy.

Maybe remembering to please both is the key to unlocking the happiness of the Danes.