Wining, Dining and Junk Food: Copenhagen Part 2

Eating while traveling can be problematic.  Either you a) can only get junk food b) can only get things you don’t like or have no idea what they are or c) get tired of local food and long for a pie or whatever your own ‘home food’ item happens to be.  Add to this jet lag, which for me means eating more than usual and craving carbs and fruit (I prefer vegetables when at home), and the whole process of eating can get complicated.  I remember vividly one Sunday lunch time in Lisbon, for example, where it was impossible to find anything to eat except from one Chinese restaurant.

Anyway, in the few days I’ve been here I have had both gourmet and junk food, as well as the usual big piles of scrambled eggs and large bowls of fruit salad, composed of half ripe fruit, from the hotel breakfast buffet.  On Saturday night, I went with some of my former colleagues, to Ristorante del Fiasco in Frederiksberg, about 10 minutes from where I used to live.  This place clearly belongs to the ‘gourmet’ category.  We all opted for the 4 course option, which included a lovely selection of antipasti including parma ham, mozzarella, tomato and basil, two different bruschetta, asparagus and some other delicacies that I failed to note properly, still being a bit jetlagged.  The second course was a ravioli stuffed with ham, cheese and spinach.  For course three, I opted for the fish, served with capers, tomato, olives, basil and a few (3) tiny pieces of potato.  I can’t for the life of me remember the type of fish, which is not that good for a food review!  For desert I opted for the four mini pieces of cheese, served with a gooseberry jam.  The food was good, and there was copious amounts of wine to help it all down.  Lovely food, lovely company and a great evening.  I can highly recommend the restaurant should you be in Copenhagen and want to splash out a little.

But man (or woman) cannot live on gourmet food alone.  Every now and then nothing beats a bit of junk food.  When we lived in Copenhagen, we often went over to Malmo in Sweden to go shopping, and grab a quick burger in the Swedish chain, Max.  There isn’t really that much I miss from here now that I live in New Zealand, but one thing I was longing for was a Max burger.  Really.  The chain now have a branch in Copenhagen, so I was able to satisfy my craving with a Frisco Burger.  However, this branch is nowhere nearly as good as Max is in Sweden, partly as it seemed to be run by 15 year old kids when we were there, with no management to actually monitor and control.  My advice is to avoid this branch and head over the bridge to Malmo if you want to try one.

The standard fast food in Denmark is the sausage, bought from the sausage wagon.  Nothing beats a Fransk Hotdog when hungry.  I haven’t had one yet, but watch this space for what I do at Copenhagen airport…

The saddest thing…a closed sausage wagon

Still on food, Sunday was brunch day with a big group of good friends.  We met at Bryggens Spisehus at the Kulturhuset at Islands Brygge.  I can recommend the pancakes, but not the fact that they did not provide proper cups for tea and coffee – just the same glasses used for the juice.

I had planned a quiet evening in the hotel with a bubble bath, but still needed to eat dinner, and still not being exactly on local time, felt hungry really early.  Since I am staying in a hotel near Nyhavn (see previous post), which basically consists of a row of tourist trap restaurants on one side of the water, I was able to find something to suit at an odd time of day.  I opted for an Italian place and some pasta with tomato and salmon, which was far from gourmet, but perfect for my needs.