I’ll be honest and say that when we booked this Thanksgiving week trip to Denmark, food wasn’t really the first thing I was getting excited about. I was eager to see Danish design and architecture. I was definitely looking forward to the Danish Christmas markets. The canals always intrigued me and looked quite picturesque. But when it came to the food, my first thought was that I’d really look forward to trying Danish pastries (cardamom buns!), but given we’re traveling with a young child, any type of Nordic tasting menu (a la the former Noma) would be completely off the table for us. When I did ChatGPT searches on food in Denmark, the first result was smorrebrod, or Danish style open-faced sandwiches, usually made with buttered rye bread and a variety of different toppings. The most common toppings include pickled herring, roast beef, shrimp with egg, potato with mayonnaise and chives.

Just think about that: the first thing that came up was…. sandwiches. Unless it’s a banh mi, no sandwich is ever going to get me that excited — ever. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the food. I had zero doubt the freshness and quality would be high. But none of this sounded like food that I’d ever crave or dream about. Plus, smorrebrod is typically always eaten cold. I do not want cold food while in cold weather. That does not sound comforting or like the Danish idea of “hygge” (coziness) that I was envisioning.

Plus, eating, simply being in Denmark is expensive. A case in point for something simple at a Christmas market: it didn’t matter if we were in France, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, or Switzerland, but when we’d get a mug of gluhwein (spiced mulled wine), it would usually be about 3-5 Euros. Here in Denmark at the markets we’ve been to, the cost of glogg (their version of gluhwein) is 60-80 DKK (or the equivalent of $9.20-12.43 USD). Smorrebrod you can buy can range anywhere from about $12-25 USD depending on how fancy the ingredients are. It’s fine for us to stomach it for a week given our time here is limited, but it was hard not to compare this to our previous European Christmas market travels.

The pastries we’ve had here have all been delicious and meticulously made, but I had that expectation in my head (and wondered how many pastries we’d end up eating by the time this trip was over). The cardamom bun was just as indulgent and delicious as I’d previously had versions of in New York; the chocolate scone Kaia enjoyed on our second day was light, airy, fluffy, with high quality bits of dark chocolate throughout. We’d also enjoyed an amazing pistachio cream croissant where the “cream” just felt like blended pistachios. And the spandauer, the most iconic Danish pastry, we enjoyed was airy and shattered on contact, with a vanilla custard that was deceptively light.

I will say that the first proper sit-down dinner we had at Kodbyens 2009 Fiskebar was very impressive, and definitely left us feeling Noma-esque vibes about the way the food was presented. Before the meal even officially began, we were presented with a plate of two massive, fat chunks of very crusty, freshly made sourdough bread, served with a little bowl of whipped seaweed butter (tinted green from the seaweed). We ordered a plate of mussels cooked in cream, “plenty of herbs” as the menu said, and Kaia devoured almost the entire serving on her own. The really interesting thing was that the grilled whole fish we ordered came with two sides that were pretty notable in their presentation. The “side of mashed potatoes” was whipped, then bruleed on the top. The side “salad” was injected with a bubbling white-tinted dressing, then drizzled with a herby green oil. Both of them looked like dishes that were inspired by Noma. The fish itself was perfectly cooked; overall, it was an amazing meal with some little surprises. But this meal definitely made me think about Copenhagen and how it’s become world renowned for “New Nordic” cuisine.