Copenhagen eats

I found there were good eats to be had in Copenhagen -if you forget your wallet wincing painfully in your pocket. Yup, it’s as expensive as everyone warns you. But there’s a pleasing array of traditional Danish food alongside plenty of international options too.

On our first night we popped to Madklubben on the next street to our apartment. It’s modern Danish with a bit of Italian in style and quite afforadable at 200kr (about 22 quid) for 3 courses. We sat at the bar with a view of the open kitchen, and ate delicious rye bread and salted butter followed by gorgeously rich and buttery gnocchi with matsutake mushrooms and the heady scent of garlic and truffle. Our first-night meals on holiday are traditionally terrible so it was nice to break the habit!

We ate lunch on Saturday at another Madklubben outpost within the Tivoli Gardens (about which more later). An affordable 175kr 3-course lunch menu was a good buy, and the desserts were particularly good this time around. White chocolate mousse with lime and elderflowers and pannacotta with freeze-dried berries, yum yum.

Our apartment was also just around the corner from Mikkeller bar, the flagship of the legendary ‘gypsy brewer’ (so-called because he doesn’t own his own premises but makes beers in collaboration with other breweries), so we ended up there a couple of times. This tiny but beautiful little bar serves around 15 of Mikkel’s own brews plus guest beers from other Danish and international indie brewers. The friendly barkeeps will advise you what to try if you have trouble deciding – and also entertain you with the story of how ‘Black Ball’ beer got its name. Actually, don’t ask about that one.

Great coffee isn’t to be found everywhere in Cph, though I was delighted to spot not a single Starbucks (the much-better Joe & The Juice is the local chain coffee house). We grabbed a coffee most mornings from the tiny cute wood-bedecked Kaffe on Istedgade, also in spitting distance from our apartment – we lucked out with location in the foody stakes, clearly.

Yummy Danish brunch at Granola, a sweetly old-fashioned place which also sells tasty looking cakes and ice cream. I got quite into the dark treacly rye bread, must find some in London.

Mother seems to be a much-hyped new pizza joint, located in the achingly hip meatpacking district – a row of old warehouses that used to be slaughterhouses and so on. We weren’t particularly impressed at the 1-hour-plus wait for food at an increasingly cold outside table, and the pizza wasn’t good enough to justify the delay. I was too hungry by the time it arrived to even snap a photo! I probably would have felt differently if we sat inside and got served quicker, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

We warmed up – and cheered up – after the disappointment at Mother at the Karriere bar, also in an old meatpacking warehouse. Brilliant unusual cocktails.

More good cocktails and delicious Japanese food at Kung Fu izakaya back in Vesterbro. Tofu ramen hotpot, mmmm.

The biggest veggieburger I’ve ever seen, washed down with Brooklyn ale, at the cute Laundromat cafe, also in Vesterbro. Love the map-covered walls and bar propped up by a colourful library of books.

Finally, coffees at the darling Sweet Treat on the way to Christiana.

Er, definitely on detox this week then. All these places are on my Copenhagen Google Map.