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FOOD&DRINK
GOODDOG
A primer on the Nordic
obsession with the frank
Haute cuisine may
be generating
the most buzz
in Copenhagen
these days—with
14
Michelin
stars awarded to
the restaurants
serving it—but that
doesn’t mean locals
have forgone a lowbrow
favorite. Hand-drawn hot dog
carts known as
pølsevogn
are
popular fixtures on the streets
here, just as similar stands are
commonplace across other
Nordic countries.
Not all dogs are
created equal,
however. Through-
out Scandinavia,
you can tell where
you are by the
street meat. The
franks in Norway
are served wrapped
in potato flatbread,
for example, while the
dogs in Sweden are buried
HOWSWEET
IT IS
Juicing up the tasting menu
BY ALIA AKKAM
ONEOF THEREASONS
the newNordic cuisine
has proven so popular is its almost cultish
reverence for healthy ingredients. So if you’ve
had your fill of foraged mushrooms and sea-
weed, steel yourself for Copenhagen’s next
big reveal: restaurants that offer multicourse
dinners with hand-blended juice pairings.
Like wines, beers or cocktails, the
juices—which are often made from local
ingredients—are paired with dishes accord-
ing to similarities or contrasts in flavor. “We
do our best to offer something that goes well
with the food, and approach the juices the
samewaywe approach thewines,” says Linda
Milagros Violago, sommelier at Geranium, a
tony restaurant in theØsterbro districtwhose
offerings include plum juicewith lemon balm
and a rhubarb–rose hip blend.
Meanwhile, among the concoctions at
Copenhagen’s Restaurant Radio—a rustic,
wood-paneled eatery featuring a four-hour
tasting menu—is a beet blend that comple-
ments a dish of roasted mushrooms with
watercress, pickled ramsons and mushroom
cream “because they both have nuances of
soil,” says chef Jesper Kirketerp.
Inventive combinations like these are half
the reason to go for a juice pairing at your
next fancy Copenhagen meal, but the best
part of this trend probably goes without
saying: No ma er how deep you get into the
pine needle lemonade
pitcher, no one wakes
up hungover.
MART N DRYLOV MADSEN (JUICE)
SPLENDOR IN THE
GLASS
Beet juice from
Restaurant Radio
Before co-founding
whimsical bakery-
r e s t a u r a n t - s h o p
Royal Café in 2007,
RudChristiansenwas
struck by the number
of Japanese visitors he met who wanted to try Denmark’s famous
smørrebrød
—
big, open-faced sandwiches made of rye bread, a
smear of butter and hundreds of permutations of toppings, from
smoked salmon and fresh dill to roast beef and rémoulade.
But there was a problem, he noted. The sheer size of each sand-
wich was interfering with diners’ desire to try more than one at
a time. So he came up with a solution: Make
smørrebrød
smaller
and serve them in sets, like sushi. In fact, he dubbed these mini
sandwiches “smushi,” and theywould go on tobecome the signature
offering of his fairy-tale, chandelier-outfitted café.
Before long, the artfully crafted sets—with toppings such as
chicken salad with salt crust–baked celeriac; roasted walnuts
and pickled field mushrooms; and charred cucumber, sour cream
and salmon roe—had so captured diners’ imagination that lines
North/East
Sushi meets sandwich at a
fusion-minded Copenhagen eatery
