Lunch at Restaurant Palaegade

Before the trendy but delicious Avocado Toast became popular here both for its visual appeal and tastyiness, there was smørrebrød. In Denmark one of the common traditional foods you will find is smørrebrød. These are open-faced sandwiches built on buttered dense sourdough rye bread – the word itself comes from the first two layers of butter (smør) and bread (brød) with the butter being the protective layer to ensure the bread does not get soggy. Then on top of that you’ll find additional layers that can run the gamut from herring to egg, mushrooms, roast beef, just cheese, and more. Many smørrebrød restaurants may offer a dozen to at some places more then 100 smørrebrød options! Smørrebrød is healthy, hearty and everywhere – I had my smørrebrød experience while on my trip last week to Copenhagen during lunch at Restaurant Palaegade.

Restaurant Palaegade offers 40 options of smørrebrød at lunch, and I picked to have lunch at Restaurant Palaegade because they are in easy walking distance from popular sites like Nyhavn, Rosenborg Slot, and Christiansborg Slot so it’s a perfect stop between visiting these three locations (I’ll talk about my visit to some of these attractions next week on my Travel Tuesday post). Restaurant Palaegade was my pick from a list of possible locations that also included Restaurant Schønnemann (old school place with more then 110 options!), Restaurant Kronborg (traditional cozy setting), and Cafe Gammel Torv (located in a cellar!). I liked how Restaurant Palaegade offered traditional as well as new takes on smørrebrød. They also had seats outside on the sidewalk, but I was too cold it turns out. Also, this was recommended to me by Gary the Foodie, so I had to try it out!

I started off with a Snap – that is, a small shot of aquavit, and restrained myself from squeeing too much at the glass already set at the table even before I ordered. How can you not have a snap once you see this glass waiting at your place setting?

They also have quite the impressive aquavit menu – more then 75 options I think I saw, so this is only a small sampling. You’ll find clear aquavit, aged aquavit, aromatic ones with Indonesian long pepper or anise and orange, and even fruity ones with quince, strawberry, and more. The one you see above in my glass is a Norwegian one (Hellstrøm) aged in oak sherry casks and has a base of potato instead of grain.

Then it was time for the traditional smørrebrød to start – they recommend about two smørrebrød per person here. I had to also think carefully about saving space for dinner, since I knew I’d be dining at Restaurant Krebsegaarden (as I recapped in my previous post) for dinner this same evening.

First, the classic take. I selected from their half a dozen Herring options the Red pickled herring with rosehips, creme fraiche, and pickled onion. If I had someone at my table, I would have definitely ordered their Herring tasting instead as I saw that was popular at many other tables – an order per person that includes 4 different herrings with garnish! Oh well – even though I had a single herring preparation, it was gorgeous – and a really generous slice too, I ended up preferring the flavor of the herring and bread and rosehip and creme fraiche along without the pickled onion which I thought distracted too much from the fish.

Like all smørrebrød, I recommend also turning the plate around just to admire how artistic the plating of that sandwich is. You always eat smørrebrød with a fork and knife – no picking this beauty up and risk letting it fall apart.
 

Then, it was time for the modern take here at Restaurant Palaegade the specialty of the house – a Tartar of lobster with crispy fried egg and cress. It may have been my fault that I admired the dish a little too long as the egg was not as runny (even though the server warned me to be careful in cutting it). I really wish I could have eaten more – all the smorrebrod at the tables next to me (all the tables are really close together!!) looked really good and I wanted to try them too! Next time…

If you go I recommend making reservations (you can do so online via Dinner Booking, which helped me secure spots at many restaurants during this trip!) as the place was full for lunch even on a weekday and I saw them turn away quite a few walk ins. I was a tourist there, but I also saw locals bringing friends and business colleagues there.

Have you had smørrebrød and snaps before? What kind did you try, and where?

More from my adventures in Copenhagen (will be linked once posts are live)

• Restaurant Krebsegaarden
• Lunch at Restaurant Palaegade
• Free things to do in Copenhagen
• Lunch at Geranium
• Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek versus Thorvaldsen’s Museum
• The food market of Reffen
• Visiting Rosenborg Castle
• Visiting Church of our Savior and Tivoli