740: TASTE Travels: Copenhagen

26:20Nick Curtin:It's because I hate sea buckthorn. I love this. I hate sea buckthorn so much. And Aaron, who runs our juice program, when he developed that juice, he sort of sidled up to me. And his Irish brogue was like, hey, Nick, I'm going to try something with sea buckthorn. I was like, Aaron, over my goddamn dead body. And he was like, no, I'm going to do it. And you're going to like it. And, you know, our whole thing is, sure. Like, we're a community of people. And he made this juice that, I love it. It makes me so mad. Deeply, deeply frustrated because it is so dynamic and it pairs so beautifully and it is so drinkable.

27:04Nick Curtin:Yeah. I just love the way juices play into the pairings. I mean, what is it about Copenhagen and juice pairings? I don't know about this city in particular. I think for us, you know, we were – Camilla was pregnant with our first son 10 years ago and we were out at a restaurant. and she got an NA pairing. And she got to have the same experience I did, even though she wasn't drinking wine. And even after our son was born, she just kept doing it because she didn't like the way that she felt after six, seven glasses of wine. And when we decided to open our own restaurant, you know, it wasn't even a question of, of course, we have to offer this for people who don't want to drink and don't want to have a headache the next morning.

27:57Nick Curtin:And more than that, it offered us an opportunity. Wine pairing is amazing because you're selecting notes and fragrances from something else somebody crafted beautifully and finding the sort of commonality or sometimes the contrast between what's on the plate. With an NA pairing or a juice pairing, you have complete control over that process. You get to choose the notes that you want to amplify. You get to choose the notes that you want to contrast. And that, you know, in restaurants where we love control, you know, that is a huge opportunity. Yeah, yeah. And we are super lucky that we have an incredible talent in Aaron who has just an amazing palate and that we've cultivated for a long time and who has really just taken that program and run so, so far with it.

28:56Nick Curtin:And now, you know, he runs his own department producing these juices. And every one of them is a banger. It's exciting. And he articulated a similar point about how, you know, when you're working with Loire Valley Wines and Chablis and all that, you know, you're very, it's narrow. I mean, you have to focus on what they've done in the bottle. But when you're creating your own beverage program through juices, that control is exciting. And I just think having those bursts of acidity to refresh, you don't get that with typical NA beverage pairings. If you're doing like forced carbonation with like bitter notes, I think the acidity is just not there.

29:41But when you go straight juices, it's brilliant.

29:43Nick Curtin:You know, juices can be too sweet. Agree. Right? That is often the go-to is like very sugar forward. Yeah. I think one of the things that makes our pairing so rewarding is that Aaron doesn't have a sweet tooth and understands that similar to the wines, there has to be a push and a pull. Yeah. Some things need more body. Some things need less. Sometimes you want sharper acidity and bitterness can be a play that you can choose. uh but when we're not stymied into a sort of like oh we have to do it as a cocktail or um uh yeah force carbonation in uh really we have such a big playground there and and using uh leaves and teas to give like grip and texture and um uh playing with things like yeah black current, which has all this very sharp acidity, but really deep round notes.

30:41Nick Curtin:We get to have a lot of fun with it. And it's a really rewarding program to have. Nick, what's it like living here? I mean, as an American, moving here. It's perfect. It's amazing. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, we have that perception, of course, of this scene of happiest culture. It's been on the top list for years. And I mean, there's obviously complexities with that statement. I know you're being kind of funny there, but what, I mean, what is a day-to-day? Like just, you see that everyone's biking, even in snowstorms, you've got definitely people who want to spend money on food, which is not the case in America in a lot of communities.

31:19Yeah, what's it like? Look, first of all,

31:23Nick Curtin:Danes face a lot of the same things that Americans face in different ways, right? But the reality of Denmark and Copenhagen is it is a society built for the people in every way. Right? This is a humble culture. There's this very famous Jentelau, which has a lot of negative connotations, but basically it's that you're not supposed to feel like you're better than your neighbor. So you don't go buy a big flashy car. You don't paint your house pink. in some ways that means that personal expression is muted that's not a great thing but in other ways it means that it contributes to the the communal mentality right my individual success does not mean that i get to uh lord it over my neighbor my individual success contributes to to their stability, right?

32:23Nick Curtin:There's so much talk about Denmark being the happiest country or in the top five. You know, a lot of talk in the US about, oh, Denmark's taxes are crazy. Yeah, we get taxed. But my kids go to a great small private school with 15 kids in the class, and I pay next to nothing for it. If we need healthcare, every single member of my team is provided with healthcare by the state. And if I want to add private healthcare on top, it costs maybe$15 a month per employee. So for me, of course, if I want to make sure that everybody gets a CAT scan within a week, if they need it, or access to mental health services immediately or physiotherapy, it costs me next to nothing.

33:11Nick Curtin:If they want to, you know, if kids want to get a college education, they're not going to be in debt their entire lives. They'll actually get a stipend to go to university because it's a job and we're building an informed community. And that's the crazy part about being here is that people are happy because they can take risks or not. They can live their life however they want to live it. They want to walk, they want to bike, they want to bus. The communities are building themselves around being places where you can do what you want to do the way that you want to do it. I could not have done Alouette in New York because the risk would have been too much.

33:51Nick Curtin:I would have put my whole family on the line. And unless I had these super deep pocket backers who would have, you know, fronted everything, and then I would have been beholden to somebody else's ideas and desires. Here I got to do it with my wife. We got to do it exactly the way that we wanted to do it. And I knew that, yeah, maybe we would succeed. Maybe we would fail, but my family would be okay. And I could stick to my guns and my convictions and that would be okay. So you're saying the startup costs, at least the risk is lower in Copenhagen in some ways than in like an American market like New York?

34:31Nick Curtin:No, the costs are still high, but it's the emotional toll and the emotional costs and and the long-term vulnerabilities, that's important, right? Like if I know that my family will always be healthy, that my children will always be educated, that there will always be care, no matter what happens to my business, like that's like throwing the shackles off, right? Like if you knew that everything would actually maybe be okay, whether or not you failed, what wouldn't you attempt to do? What is that quote? Like, if you couldn't fail, what would you do? That is Denmark. The social safety net exists.

35:17Nick Curtin:You can fail in small ways, but it won't destroy your life. Yeah, it's getting people to buy in. Like, literally buy in with the taxes. But you also just have to buy into this idea that that big car is not required. There are some shocks. There are some sticker shocks. There are some things that are completely reverse to how we perceive stuff in the US. But, you know, coming in with a new perspective or sort of that American hustle mentality, it gives me so much freedom and calm. And, you know, I've been through it all. So to come here and have these things that just sort of exist that I used to have to fight for, that means that I can take that energy and I can put it into other things and that I can live out my passions in my life and do those things in tandem with each other rather than them being two things that are in conflict.

36:19Nick Curtin:That is a great feeling. I cannot understate that. This is an amazing place. And it's cool to hear you say it that way. And I know this is not hyperbole or just for the interview, because we've heard it time and again, just being in the city and talking to folks of many different backgrounds. I think there's a general satisfaction with the structure. And I think it is the commitment to not needing everything, which I think is the problem with America in many ways. You just people think they need everything. How do you as a chef and operator, how do you stay inspired and keep things fresh? And also a second part of the question is just maintaining profile.

37:02You've got the star, but just keeping yourself in the conversation. In a market with a lot of great restaurants, you've mentioned many.

37:11Nick Curtin:To do that backwards, first, we are often seen as a very quiet restaurant. Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. We had someone in the other day who called us like the best kept secret in Copenhagen, which is both something that's really cool to hear, but also kind of frustrating. Yeah. Because I'm like, damn it. Okay. You know what? Like we, we've just sort of constantly put one foot in front of the other, uh, and, and constantly just organically tried to grow, uh, our perception ourselves. Uh, and, and that has meant, uh, butts in seats and, and that, uh, uh, that people watch what we do.

37:54Nick Curtin:and we view our job as just saying, okay, if we're going to put something out there, then when people come to experience it firsthand, we have to exceed what they think they're getting into. And when we do that, then people go out and they spread the word for us. And that's huge. And then as far as inspiration, the big thing for me is actually just going out and experiencing these farms. Because so much of what we do is informed by what these farmers are doing in the field, you know, with their vegetables, how their beliefs in regenerative cuisine, biodynamic cuisine, organic agriculture, and amplifying that.

38:39Nick Curtin:You know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we do things. We just look at what are they growing? How are they growing it? What are they growing it with? and then the parts kind of just put themselves together. I know that's really reductive, but that's how it feels sometimes. How often are you changing the plots? We change one to two dishes a week on average. No way. Yeah. This is interesting. It came late in our conversation. That's interesting. I did not know that. Yeah. I thought this was a little more of a static menu. No, I wish. Man. Look, we - I mean, which I think is a credit to you because I think you get a lot of quarter-baked ideas when you're switching dishes all the time and seeing the process for so many dishes.

39:23It's crazy. You're switching up to a nice. It's constant. That's cool. You should say that more. Yeah. Because that would be maybe, like you're going to have a different experience if you're coming in here six months later.

39:36Nick Curtin:Yeah, I mean, you know, again, maybe we should. My problem is that I usually don't volunteer information. I just answer questions. Sure, fair. But, you know, the reality is we have like 30 seasons in Denmark, 29 very short ones and one very long one, right? And if we are going to be a local restaurant that is dogmatic about terroir and sourcing, we have no option, right? Like if I get three weeks out of peas, I am lucky. And I can't just change the peas in a plot, right, to a peas from another farm that happens to have a longer season, right? Because A, that means that we actually have to physically change the plot in order to do that.

40:22Nick Curtin:B, my belief, our belief as a restaurant is that the dish that we create only works with those peas. Because the character and structure of those peas is what informed the creation of the dish from the get-go. So I can't just run out of peas and then slot other ones in and expect that we'll get the same wow moment. That means that we are just constantly chasing the next thing. We are constantly talking to the farmers about sourcing. We have to work collectively and creatively as a team and cooperatively and be informing each other. And we built the entire structure of the kitchen and our cooperation with the farmers around that is what's happening in the field, what's happening with the produce, what are we going to do next, how do we move this dish along.

41:16Nick Curtin:So we're changing dishes within the plots constantly throughout the year. And then we're changing plots like one to two a month. Sometimes in the summertime, it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We have no option. So fun. But it's also super rewarding. It's exciting. It's really exciting and creative. Nick Curtin, this has been a really great conversation. Elowet's a restaurant. I highly recommend it. I had a great meal there. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you so much for having me, man.

41:48Eliza, this episode is brought to you by Rula. Here's something I think about a lot. We use our insurance for everything. A doctor's visit, a specialist, a dentist appointment we've been putting off for a year. But when it comes to mental health care, suddenly we're expected to pay out of pocket or navigate some platform that doesn't actually work with our plan. That's a broken system. Rula fixes it. They're a health care company, not a tech gimmick, not a subscription trap, that connects you with over 15 ,000 licensed therapists and psychiatrists nationwide, covered by more than 100 insurance plans.

42:26The average copay for sessions is$15, and the care is real. The providers are vetted, and appointments are available as soon as tomorrow. Visit Rula.com slash taste to get started. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash taste. You deserve mental health care that works for you, not against your budget. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. We are back from Copenhagen. And we're recording this, you know, a few days after returning. I miss the place. I, you know, early in this episode, we heard a great interview with Nick Curtin from Alouette. And we went on a coffee crawl. You know, the coffee there is really some of the world's finest.

43:12And I wanted to break in in the middle of this episode just to go over some other places we went, like places that Clayton and I were blown away by. I think Copenhagen is such a unique place right now because 10 years ago, the scene was not like it is today. And we're seeing really diverse chefs. We're seeing different formats. And we got to explore a number of them during our visit. Yeah. When you say we, you mean you and Clayton. And now I'm in the studio getting to hear about the trip and all of the things that I missed out on. So I'm just a little upset. Rude. But I'm mostly excited to hear about the trip.

43:46What's the first place you guys want to brag about? I know. It's rude. I'm sorry. I love when you're with Clayton and I, and in future trips, you will be. It's okay. I love getting to hear your highlight reel. And getting Clayton on the mic is a special and rare occasion. Clayton's jumping on. And I'm linking to all these places on a map in the show notes. So when you're in Copenhagen, you can save some of these spots. First place is Bar Vitrine. Really one of the places that came up time and again when we were researching this trip. It was originally recommended by Ben Liebman, who worked at Noma for years.

44:19Nick Cartola wrote about it on his Instagram a couple months ago. And I just remember the name Bar Vitrine. And we went and had an exceptional meal in many ways. It's a restaurant from Driti Aurora. She is an incredible talent. And I got to catch up with her after the meal. We interviewed her in a loading dock behind the restaurant. So that will be appearing in a later episode. And a little bit about Driti. She attended the CIA in America and ended up working in Florida. We talk about that a little bit in our interview and eventually made it to Noma, where she worked for four years. You know, we talked a lot in that interview about the changing face of Copenhagen.

45:04As I mentioned, Bar Vitrine is a great example. It's a wine bar, essentially, in the lobby of a building in kind of the central business district of Copenhagen. and it's really small. It's a square shape, which is unique for a restaurant. So you're kind of seated around the, there's seats around the edge looking out onto the street and then there's basically a square in the middle. And it gave a lot of wild air right away with the wine service and just like really interesting small plates to pair with the wines. I did not drink wine, but I had a really terrific kombucha. Kombucha will come up, Eliza, a lot during this conversation.

45:44I know you're such an aficionado. And we kept bringing you up, Clayton. I was like, we should let Liza was here for the kombucha. For the kombucha. I love that's how I'm thought of. You are. You're an aficionado. And Copenhagen has quite the scene. I had a rose geranium kombucha from Table Ferments. Clayton had a really cool high altitude Alsatian white wine, too. And really the beverage service is something that could be its own episode. But I really want to talk about the food because, again, it's these small plates that are arriving with the wines that really interested us. an early course struck me right away as being kind of just outstanding creativity it was a cured pike perch with citrus there was oranges and pomelos in there and kiwi with a side of crispy tapioca like a chip that you dip into it other courses that really hit with us were there's a chicken and scallion pancake that driti told us really wish he was inspired by the korean pajun and and i really loved it i think chicken that format is really interesting and there was this cool citrus chili sauce.

46:42There was a tempura egg, all yolky and yellow and inscrammable. There's a pork neck with lardo, quince, and chilies. Again, really reminded me of a wild air and the fact that the dishes were coming out very quickly to pair with the courses of wine and really lived up to the high expectations we had. Okay, what's the next spot on the list? Next spot is kind of the other end of the spectrum, Montergard or Montergad. There's the Danish accent. I'm going to do my best here and we're going to go for it. I actually do know smarble. Shmarble. Do you know that word at all? I don't think so. It's the open-faced sandwiches that are iconic in Denmark.

47:23Oh, I thought it was pronounced completely differently. Yeah, it's smarble. I went on YouTube to get a Danish pronunciation for it. Like marble with an S on? That's what I'm getting from the YouTube, from the Danish YouTube. Okay, maybe I'll... It's not that I don't believe you, but... Yeah. Well, you know, I've tried to pronounce it many times over the years but um it doesn't matter really because it's delicious uh when done right and this place is a real legend in the game and what i like about this place is it feels very like a danish brosery you're walking in and there's a chalkboard that's brought to your table and they're verbaling all the special smarbles and there's a fixed menu and i just i love the attitude of the of the of the staff they were very like confident in in the way that I love when people know that they're like the place to get this marble in the city.

48:12Clayton, I have to ask you, when they asked us if we wanted snops, snaps, what were you thinking? I was going to not, I was not going to partake myself as a non-drinker, but you went for it. I mean, I've drank liquor before. I thought it's sort of like a shot. I know. You attended a color. I've been on a date with a girl. She goes to another school. She lives in Canada. Yeah. Well, now she lives in Copenhagen, I can say. She lives in Copenhagen, your new girlfriend. Her name is Schnapps. Yeah. So I thought I could handle it. And I wanted to partake because when we were planning this trip, it was, you know, written into, you know, what we were going to do that we're going to have these open face sandwiches with snaps.

49:00And I thought, well, Matt doesn't drink, so I'll do the snaps. And there was, I'm trying to look up. I can't remember. Matt, do you remember the different sorts of pours? Because it's a little tiny glass, almost like a miniature shrunk down wine glass. It's like metal. And they give you several choices to pour. I think the one that's way to the top is the responsible. It's sarcastic. The pours are sarcastic. Yeah, they have the responsible and then they have like the devious or something like that. It was a really fun way to name the schnapps levels. and so i you know gave it a smell very fragrant yeah very very fragrant almost like cologne i would say and and to be clear the one you were having was actually aged in wood so like you can do like you know age snaps or you can do like the straight up like clear liquor ones that are like not that are more like in the the lighter fluid that you yeah and this is good these were good of the snaps game.

49:59And I took a couple sips and I couldn't do it. Yeah, I couldn't do it. Because it's the fragrance plus the amount of alcohol. And I thought, this is the beginning of our day. And I was like, I have to record. I have to work. We had appointments. We had a very, very busy schedule. From stumbling around after just draining these snaps, I felt like I would not be able to function the way I needed to function. And I'm assuming that the people sitting next to us were old hat at this. They seem to be lifelong Danes from what I could tell. Yeah, yeah. And one of the women, one of the older women, got the same pour I did and it was gone in a flash.

50:40She did the straight shot. Well, you're supposed to knock it back. I think if you're sipping on it, you're never going to really get ahead. I was wondering about that. Well, I thought because our host was sipping on it as well. We were close from Coffee Collective. I have to say, to set the scene, they had like 17 inches of snowfall that day. It was like the most that had fallen in Copenhagen in like 12 years. Wow. Like we went to do one interview at the restaurant. They didn't even have a shovel. And we're using like half sheet pans to shovel. And like the city kind of shut down. So like Clayton, I'm glad you didn't have the schnapps when we were like walking around in this like literally unshoveled city.

51:16Like they were like they were like getting all the bad looks in New York. If you're if you leave your you know your front unshoveled. You know that's kind of the vibe. Yeah. Well it would have been precarious but you maybe would have been a little extra warm. Yeah it would have been good for that. And also if I fell I could fall into a snow drift. Yeah there was lots of snow. That's positive. Feet cushioning. So back to the smorble. Smorble. I just said smorble. It's I think yeah I'm going to go with smorble. I'm going to go with it. What's iconic about these is like it's like pickled fish like herring or or fresh shrimp.

51:45lots of mayonnaise and eggs like everywhere. So I'm sorry, Eliza, that you have to hear about this. I know you're not a fan of the eggs, but... It's okay. I support this overall. But what we had at Montegar was really terrific. We tasted some marinated herring with pureed celeriac. I had a shrimp with eggs and mayo, a classic. I really loved the gravlax with this very sweet mustard sauce that I really contrasted in a cool way. And like the breads were not consistent. They were like lighter Danish rice and darker ones with different charables. And I have to say the dessert was really, really good.

52:19It was just a simple lemon meringue, really beautifully done. And just it was like a Friday afternoon. Like people were kind of like getting into the weekend vibes. Really, really cool scene. Highly recommend this place. Okay, what's the next spot? This is probably my, for me, my favorite meal of the entire trip. Alouette was probably 1B, which I love that meal. These are very different places. but it's Surt. S-U-R-T is how you would say it in English but I think it's Sur, maybe silent T in Danish. This is a pizzeria from Giuseppe Oliva and I posted it and I got some messages from friends who'd been there.

52:59Like, pure co-sign in this statement. It's like truly one of the greatest pizza experiences in the world right now. Wow. For real. For real. And a guy is like really humble. He's very underrated. and he comes from Baste, which was Christian Puglisi's famous pizzeria that he opened about a decade ago, and Giuseppe worked there and worked through the system there, but Giuseppe is from his family, at least, is from Sicily, and these pizzas are, I would say, the dough is everything with pizza for me, and what I'm tasting with this pizza is interesting. It's pretty sour, like on the more sour end of the sourdough pizzas, and it's all about the texture and the elasticity and the lightness of the dough.

53:43It's a three-day process to make this pizza and I was so impressed with it. I ate all of the crust. We shared three pizzas and we ate everything. The pizza itself is not everything. We had the pies, but there was a dish that I'm still thinking about truly in the most cliche sense. Lion's mane mushrooms slow braised in like a vinegar and more like an acidic balance. It's so delicious. But with Lion's Mane, just like the way that it takes the texture of meat and feels like just a unique mouthfeel and a unique way of doing it. And I rarely do see like a Lion's Mane vegetable side at a restaurant.

54:20And I thought it was so terrific. That sounds so good. Clayton, what was your favorite of the pizzas? Oh, so the one that we had that had the pine shoots. Yes. And the potatoes on it. I'm so down with that one. Pickled pine shoots. So that pizza in particular had telaggio on it, which I think is the greatest piece of cheese around. Like I love a melted telaggio. And it had, as you mentioned, pickled pine shoots and potatoes, which were dente, which interesting choice. I liked it. Not for everyone. But I loved that pizza. And the other pizza we had was the Heinzschelm, which was buffalo mozzarella, slow cooked leeks, pork sausage, and this fermented chili crisp that to me really brought it all together.

55:04with just like, of course, that chili crisp, the spice there. And then it had a shaved 40-month Parmesan Reggiano on top. And they covered it. It looked like, you know, there was snow outside and it looked like it snowed on our pizza. I love that. And the pine shoots, that's like a spruce tip, right? Yeah. The edible part of the... Exactly. I think that seems like a really Scandinavian ingredient. So it's cool to be able to see that on a Italian-style pizza. It was very cool. And then the dessert, not to be slept on, was just a simple chocolate mousse. with C. buckthorn, which is everywhere in Copenhagen.

55:38The little kind of orange berry? Yeah, they're like little berries, exactly, and have a very unique acidity there. So I really liked Sir. I thought it was truly phenomenal. I cannot wait to go back there. Yeah, thanks for sharing it. Yeah.

55:57This is what I do when I travel. I go to visit as many coffee shops as I can in a very short time. And people are always like, how are you not over caffeinated? And I definitely am. And I will be today as well. And so will you. This is Klaus Thompson, a co-founder of pioneering coffee roaster Coffee Collective. He's taking us on a coffee tour around Copenhagen. We're downtown Copenhagen and we are on this iconic street called Vognmærgade. It's really the most beautiful, historic part of town, all these crooked buildings. I'm going to take you to the Bermuda Triangle of coffee now. We're going to start at our shop, so we can start off with that.

56:37And then we're going to go around to April and La Capra right over here. It's like five minutes between all three shops. As we make our way to our first stop, I speak with Klaus about what makes Coffee Collective so unique on the cafe level and a key player in the global specialty coffee game. I just, I love your coffees. I love that when you enter one of the cafes, you're greeted by a barista who knows the coffees, makes great coffees, but also is super friendly. Talk about that style of service that I think is pretty iconic that Denmark has with coffee. Yeah, I think, I mean, for us at least, we've always started with the coffee.

57:16It's what we're really enthusiastic about. we want to showcase like the like the kind of coffees that excites us like if there's a new bean out there new flavor whatever it is a new processing method and we're excited about it that's just what we have to share with our guests then i'm pretty sure they will feel that excitement and buy into it you're a world barista champion uh i love that about meeting you because i think it's such rarefied i'm with i'm with a champion here tell us about winning that competition yeah mean it is 20 years ago so I feel like I'm still living high off of that but it's it's a it's an amazing competition where you really get to play around with coffee in different setting and test out what what can you do with coffee when you're not bound by constrictions of you know practicalities of a coffee shop and then I think like these days it's just it's grown it's massive it's it gave me a lot of opportunities to visit other countries and connect with people and I I still really enjoy that network with people in Bogota, Colombia and all over the world.

58:23There's friends that I made through these competitions. We arrive at the Bernica location of Coffee Collective, where we are greeted warmly by the baristas behind the bar. We settle down to taste our first coffees of the tour. Yeah, we're drinking two different coffees. So the first one you're getting is from Gishathain in Kenya. This is actually the first coffee factory or wet mill I ever visited in Kenya in 2007. It's a long time ago. Beautiful coffee, washed and citric clean. And then you're drinking our latest release from Joan Vergara's in Colombia, which is a crazy coffee. So you're going to see like it almost can be more different.

59:03Like this clean, washed profile, like super citric, acidic, kind of black curranty notes. and then the other one it's going to be like opening a bag of candy it's completely overwhelming like crazy that coffee can taste like that but it's all done it's no co-ferment it's no artificial yeast what this producer is doing is adding like sugar to the microorganisms that is fermenting in coffee and like making basically like a sourdough so you feed off the natural microbiology there and then using that for the next fermentation batch. And then they do a lot of crazy things like thermoshocking the cherries.

59:45We leave Coffee Collective and head back out into the snowy streets for our next stop. So now I'm going to take you to April, which is owned by Patrick Rolf, who actually used to have a coffee shop as well in Korea, in Seoul. He closed it again, but very inspired, I think, by that whole aesthetics and everything. Definitely one of the best groceries in Denmark. What a cool studio. We enter April, which is a complete contrast from Klaus's Coffee Collective. Quiet and operated with the formality of a three Michelin star restaurant, the reservation-only coffee tastings are a thing of legend, where six coffees will set you back$120 USD.

1:00:29So tell us about April. What did you think about it? I think it's really lovely. It's a very different kind of environment to be in. it's like the whole like sit down at a table table service there's no menu board you can't order at the bar they come down and serve delicious coffees to you yeah and it's also interesting because they're one of the places really pushing like that kind of restaurant feel but also the price point of a restaurant but in a coffee shop environment you can order like a single set of like an espresso and a milk drink for about a hundred dollars that's actually a set of like 120 dollars yeah it was about that which you know it's not to sound greedy on behalf of the coffee community but it is to say like that's not far off what you would pay for like an astonishing wine in a bar i mean i would say you would pay a hundred dollars for a incredibly mediocre wine in in new york that's the thing and have this incredible coffee yeah service uh and i liked it a lot i think april was doing some amazing stuff we tried that was it an ethiopian wash yeah So we had both that washed and the natural.

1:01:32So the washed was the espresso, which was like super creamy, very soft mouthfeel, like really aromatic and beautifully balanced. And then the natural was on a pour-over, which for me was like a lot milder. You know, it's very low extraction wise, which they do. A lot of people like it. I think it could have had a little more power to it. But more body. I miss the body in this pour-over. But still very delicious, and I think they roast incredibly well. I think the April team does a really good job. And then for me, it's just so nice that there's difference, that you can go in here and get a completely different experience than what you get at us or at La Cabra or Prologue.

1:02:17Everyone tries to carve out their niche and do something differently. We leave April and try some coffees at La Cabra. Over the past couple of years, La Cabra has been a smash hit in New York, mostly on the reputation of its cardamom buns and baking excellence. But in Copenhagen, it's all about the coffee. So Klaus, we just popped into La Cabra, which I know and Clayton knows really well from New York. We have a couple locations, super popular, but we got to go to a location in Copenhagen. It was kind of half, there was a pop-up retail shop, and I really liked the way that they were doing the service.

1:02:53What do you think? It was lovely, really nice service. accidentally brought in a cup from a competitor in a takeaway cup. They were super cool and you know nice like we ordered a really nice washed geisha from Panama. Like that's the style of coffees that I really like. Really carefully brewed and then they also offered like oh do you want to try we have a really good batch on. That's the kind of service I'm looking for. Like someone who will actively say you should also try this or I'm excited about this. They had good selection they actually have six different coffees for pour over on today so good good selection nice to sit in there and yeah I love it and I love that it's so coffee forward here like in America we think of La Cabra as the cardamom bun shop and you were telling me that they're not even known as a bakery here not here in Copenhagen in Aarhus they they have their bakery which is quite well known but they haven't opened a bakery in Copenhagen yet yeah So they will eventually, but yeah.

1:03:56I love the coffee at La Cabra in the East Village, and they do great service. And we saw this being sold on the batch brew. Just beautiful, beautiful cup. Let's check out the next place then. We take an eight minute walk to the next coffee destination. Made longer by the slushy and slippery snow, Klaus tells us about the neighborhood. We are close to Kongensnutor, the very touristy part with all the beautiful colored buildings. It's straight ahead on this road, actually. This is Goddaskade. If you go here in six hours, it'll be very young, drunk people. We arrive at Cabin, our last stop on the tour, and a collaboration with multidisciplinary design firm Frema.

1:04:38Cabin is a newer entry on the Copenhagen coffee scene, and run by head barista Jun Nishimura, who worked in some of Japan's best third-wave shops. He serves coffees from the award-winning Norwegian roaster Tim Wendelbo. So let's talk about Cabin. I really like what they're doing there as our final stop. It's brand new. Yeah, it just opened, I think, a month or a half ago or something. Yeah, really lovely. It's serving coffee exclusively from one of my good friends, Tim Wendelbo in Norway. As I mentioned, he started the same year as us. We followed each other. We competed against each other in the World Barista Championship where he won that year.

1:05:15Credit to him. but it's a really nice it's a very small location here in the downtown Copenhagen really beautiful coffee how did how did you like it I liked it I thought that the it was one of the better extracted coffees we had all day you're self-excluded coffee collective has been doing exquisite work so I have to say I'm par with what you're doing and we had another washed Ethiopian And I really like the Kenyan, the washed Kenyan here on the filter. It's like beautifully transparent, but well executed, like both good roast, good brew. And I think it shows like this is, of course, a Norwegian roaster being brewed in Denmark, but it's very much the kind of style that we like washed and clean and elegant.

1:06:02After an afternoon of incredible coffee with our friend Klaus, we have some final thoughts about the Copenhagen scene. It's a wonderful city and I think walking around a city for coffee is a great way to see a city. To me, it's affordable. You get to see different neighborhoods. You get to meet a lot of different people along the way. Have drink great coffee, of course. And baristas always know what are the good spots around. They will know where the new wine bars are and where to get beer and what cool little pop-up is happening. So always check out with your local baristas where to go. Yeah.

1:06:37Well, thank you so much for the tour of Copenhagen Coffee. It was, Klaus, a real honor to meet you and talk coffee with one of the co-founders of Coffee Collective, which, again, has long been one of my favorite roasters in the world. Oh, thank you so much. It's my pleasure entirely. Thanks a lot.

1:06:57So, Liza, I have a... When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kid's pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like... Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton, for this day. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing VirtuoUp, The latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch, sense, and taste in every single cup. With a three-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew-over-ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way.

1:07:50Sip for yourself. Shop Virtuo up exclusively at Nespresso.com. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. A few more restaurants to share that Clayton and I enjoyed.

1:08:28Yeah, bring on the Copenhagen, Rex. What's first? More Copenhagen wrecks, and I'm linking to all these in the map in the show notes. Interesting place that Ben Lieben recommended. Again, it's kind of our thesis is Copenhagen, since my last visit 10 years ago, has changed dramatically in terms of restaurants, format and style. And Bacca de Busc is truly counter to a lot of the fine dining. You'd find a geranium, et cetera, et cetera. The place is, it's vegetables. That's all they do. It's not, they're not calling it plant-based. they're not calling it anything else. Basically, it's a vegetable restaurant.

1:09:02It's located in Norboro, which is kind of the younger neighborhood I've stayed in a few times. It's kind of on the edge of it. Very cool neighborhood to walk around. Great shopping in that neighborhood. And this restaurant has been open since 2018. It was started by a group of six. I would say there were artists in the group. There were a couple of chefs, young, young, young kids who really wanted to open the restaurant after doing a series of pop-ups, sounds very New York, like modern times New York. They were called the Plant Boys. That was like the name of the pop-ups. Is boys being spelled traditionally?

1:09:39Is there like an I or a Z in there? I mean, the O might have that little slant in the Danish way, but there's no Z. Proceed. And one of the founders, Philip Nussbaum Varlev, took care of us. And we didn't really see a menu. He was just like, I'm going to bring you a bunch of plants. And I think the caveat with our meal is we were eating at a plant-based restaurant that really flexes during the seasons, during truly the worst season of the year for vegetables in Copenhagen. It was deep winter. And the meal reflected that. And I think that it was interesting to see what they could do with mostly root vegetables.

1:10:15And we saw beets show up a number of times. There were pickled beets with dehydrated olives. There was a citrus and tomato salad with crushed nuts. And what I really like, one of the courses was it was basically a variety of seaweed with baton raw radish and with a little side of grated horseradish. And they were like, mix it all up and eat it. They were like plying us with kombucha. Like, I have to say this. I love kombucha like one glass a day. But when you're on your fifth or sixth glass of kombucha for the day. It's very acidic. It's a lot. A lot going on there. Carbonation. I think your gut microbiome was probably very fed.

1:10:56Talkative. What's happening? It was speaking to us. Do you think the kombucha trend in Copenhagen, sorry to side note, but is that just because fermentation in general is so popular in that kind of cuisine? I think it's a great point. I think it's exactly that. I think that fermentation has been part of the Danish foodways forever because of the weather, because of the long winters and the dark winters. I also think that they're just I think that it has a very, very good wine scene. But like in America, the NA lifestyle is really taking off in Copenhagen. And we saw tremendous NA beer lists in most of the restaurants.

1:11:33And I just think as a progressive culture, they're thinking about maybe curbing alcohol consumption and kombucha really falls into that. This restaurant was really cool. Like all the ceramics that the dishes were served on were unique, many handmade, many vintage. Philip gave me a little souvenir on the way out, a little ceramic fisherman. That was really sweet of him as a closing gift. And I just think that there's cool art on the wall and it's a really narrow space. It's almost like going through a tunnel. And I just, I really liked it. I would love to obviously go back in like August. I think it would be a very different restaurant.

1:12:05I'd say, honestly, it's giving like moosewood vibes and dirt candy vibes completely. Cool. So the dishes are very composed, too. It's not just like raw veg in a basket. It's like really like chef-y composed dishes. Each one's have a proper sauce. Definitely lean sweeter than I'm used to. That was like the one thought about the way they're cooking there. I probably would be less, I would prefer it to be less sweet. But that was just like my preference. Danish palate is probably different. And I'd like to go back. There are very nice people running that restaurant. Very great vibes. Awesome. What's the next spot?

1:12:39Well, the next spot is, and we'll close with this, it's two bakeries. Now, we had pastries all the time. Like, basically, we landed and had pastries. And we had them with all of our coffees when we were doing our coffee crawl. So it was hard to, like, designate two bakeries that stood out because it's such an amazing culture. Many books have been written about Scandinavian baking. And really, it was hard to choose. But I think I'm going to do it. Clayton, can you guess which ones I'm going to talk about? Anderson? You got it. We're starting with Anderson. Absolutely. Anderson Bakery, really cool story.

1:13:13I didn't know this when I went there, but I did some research. It came up many times when we were meeting with chefs. They were like, you got to go to Anderson, Anderson, Anderson. It's in the Island's Brig neighborhood. And Anderson has a really unique backstory. Japanese baker Shinsuke Takaki came to Copenhagen in 1959 and fell in love with Danish baking. He then went back to Japan and opened up a series of Anderson bakeries starting in 1962. And he really was doing this traditional baking style. And he opened up several bakeries around Japan using the Danish techniques and products. So it's interesting to see these Japanese flavors embodied in this Danish baking when it came back in 2019.

1:14:02And I think a great example is this Danish carnival bun, which was topped with a yuzu glaze. And this is like the bun that's very popular in January. And we have a great segment at the end of this episode talking all about it. And I just love that we can have a great yuzu pastry in Copenhagen from this historical bakery. They've won plenty of awards for their cardamom buns and their laminated pastries. You know, the pan au chocolat, the croissants. They do the Spandauer, which is the classic Danish pastry. It's like a puff pastry filled with vanilla pastry cream. Beautiful representation of that.

1:14:38But I think the cafe itself, beautifully designed. All right, the second bakery, and again, we went to so many bakeries, it was hard to choose, was Hart. We had to go to a Hart. There's 10 of them. We picked one. And by all means, Richard Hart really pioneered baking in Copenhagen, at least in terms of professionalizing it in a way that it's like scaled. And he's become like the baker in Copenhagen. He's not Danish. He's from London, but he trained on the West Coast with Chad Robertson and known for his breads. And I brought back a loaf of Danish rye and gave it to a friend and got to slice into it at a Super Bowl party.

1:15:15And it was fantastic. It was so dense and so flavorful. But I really like this space. I mean, I think he has a really good sense for design. And we had a chocolate chip cookie as well, which was very American and had bitter chocolate. It felt like it's something you could get, like, you know, all over New York. But back to the space, I just thought that he had a really cool, like, posters. He had a real skilled festival poster from the 60s and just, like, a really nice design sense there. And I'll just leave clothes and say, like, I walked up to the cooler. You know, like, some bakeries are going to get, like, two or three options.

1:15:51At heart, they had, like, maybe 20 options. They had, of course, kombucha, but they also had like fresh juices, three types of dairy and a bunch of N.A. beers and beers, regular beers and wines. And that was really cool that you'd have such a wonderful beverage case in a really small bakery. So that's Hart. And I feel like we made some tracks, Clayton. We definitely did. You forgot about the candy shop we stopped in. We did. We stopped in the candy shop. I didn't put that one in the list because, you know, there's lots of candy shops. Did you get some salty licorice? Think about the saltiest licorice you'd ever want times by a thousand.

1:16:27Yeah. Really? And that's what my bag was full of. I respect you in your pursuit of eating the salty black licorice, even though it is not my favorite. Do you think that it was too salty for you or were you into it? I was into it. Wow. I think this whole trip sounds so special. I guess I'm curious for both of you, if there was one thing you ate on this trip that you could have right now, what would it be? Sirt pizza, obviously. I'm emphatic about this guy's talent and I thought that the lion's mane mushroom side was something that I will be seeking for the rest of my life that trout dish from Alouette just phenomenal melt in the mouth just Alouette was really memorable the way that Nick and his team does the plots and we talked about earlier in the episode I mean really really cool to see kind of like kind of structured fine dining um be delicious time and again with dishes and i believe that trout route is that trout dish the trout loin you're talking about yeah yeah the way they cooked out uh is a different style of of of fish like a really a fish that can have like a lot of body but he's able to cut it down and like it it was like i don't want to like say something negative it was like a little bit spongy in a way but it was so flavorful that i i loved it i love the way it came out.

1:17:46Yeah, it was soft, but in a great way. Yeah, really, really great dish. I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm glad you both had such a great trip. Absolutely. Thanks to wonderful Copenhagen for having us over. And really, I love this episode. We love taking the This Is Taste on the road. And it was just fantastic to be back in Copenhagen after a decade and see so many cool new restaurants and changes to the dining dynamic. And I'd also like to travel throughout Denmark because Because Copenhagen obviously is the city, the capital, but it is a big place. And going up to our house in the north or just like going to the Faroe Islands would be awesome.

1:18:24It'd be amazing. Thanks for sharing. Thanks, Liza.

1:18:30My name is Søren Stissing, and my title is co-CEO in the architectural company called Brick, located in Copenhagen. So let me just ask you, we've been walking around this chilly afternoon in this northern harbor neighborhood and really wanted to talk to you about how you think about developing new neighborhoods in Copenhagen. It's a city of great growth, even though there's one and a half million people. You have so many tourists coming here and really it's expanding and expanding. And so fascinating to meet with you and hear about how you develop a former harbor. So where are we right now? So right now we are in, it's called Norhavn or North Harbor in English, and it's the northern part of Copenhagen located towards the sea.

1:19:16It's an old freeport back in the days, and it has been developed since early 2000s, where they made the structural master plan. and we came in in 2014, my company, where we did what we called urban life strategy that was followed by an implementation program. And what you see today is the result of our work and a lot of others, amazing colleagues in the field, yeah. And going back, we were chatting and you worked with Christian Podlisi on BASED, which I love, and developing that part of Copenhagen, and the base is still open today. Pugliese is no longer involved. But I just remember going there 10 years ago and thinking how this neighborhood really feels very up-and-coming, and the way it's been developed is very interesting.

1:20:13Yeah. So you think about the Denabo case? Yeah. So that's right, yeah. So actually, before the North Harbor project, we worked on a bit smaller project in the city, on Nørrebro. We call it Guldbergsskade i kvarteret. It's attached to the name of the street. And where we had a small plot, we were transforming from an old tramp station to a really hyped part of Nørrebro today. and one of you know one of the bricks in this concept or you could say Dynamos was actually Christian who came in running the based pizzeria that got you know that got a really really good reputation all over the world quite fast and Christian he made he made beast or based and he made this this mirabel the bakery and the pastaria next to him.

1:21:17Working with Christian was amazing because he's a really, really nice guy, but he was fantastic in his approach when he made Beast because it was all from the farm going to the restaurant. What was not used in the restaurant went back to the farm at night time and got reused, growing vegetables, making the meat. I got to visit that farm with him. It was amazing. Farm of ideas, yeah. Yeah, it was farm of ideas. It was great. Yeah, and on the restaurant, you know, the concept we made with him on the first floor, he had, of course, a private dining room, but also he had an osteria where he made the cheeses for the pizzas downstairs.

1:22:01He had a meadery where he made, you know, all his sausages. And so it was really, you know, really cool, but kept in a simple way. so that was our you know our first project and and and the project that kick-started our our work in the north harbour it has been an amazing journey and yeah really really nice to see how it turned out today yeah well soren it's great to great to meet you thank you for the tour and for catching up thank you matt

1:22:32crystal hilsher welcome to this is taste it's such a pleasure to meet you Same. Likewise. Likewise. I'm excited. I love when I when we were connected, I was like, I recognize somebody, somebody who loves food, who's a professional in the industry. You've appeared on Danish morning television for seven years as the cake lady. But you're also you're a recipe developer, a journalist as well. And you've been on a journey for a while to document a very special Danish pastry. It's a winter tradition. Tell us all about it. It's kind of like a Halloween, but we don't dress up scary. And we do it like in the end of February.

1:23:14And the tradition is you dress up and you have this like wooden bowl, kind of like a pinata, but made out of wood. And back in the day, they used to put like a real life cat inside. Like this is like in the 18th century. It's like way back. It's super scary. This has gone dark. This is not happening now. Now we put candy inside. And all of the kids, they dress up and they do it at school. And the one who gets like the hole, like in this big wooden bowl and the candy comes out, they get like this crown. Okay. Then the tradition was that you also eat, it's called a festalown. Festalown. Yeah. And we eat these buns and you have an old school bun, which is like this yeasty dough with a catamom.

1:24:04and then you have vanilla cream inside, and also we call it remorse, which is like this marzipan paste in the bottom. And that's like the, we call it the old school. And then you have another dough, which is like a croissant dough, and you can, like the old version of it was like you slice it open like a burger, and inside you would put this jam, homemade jam, usually black currant or prunes, and then you would put this vanilla custard, like mixed up with whipped cream. So festalaun is a traditional pastry, and you're seeing traditional versions of it, but you're also seeing modern versions. Now you loved it so much that you've traveled throughout Denmark.

1:24:54Yeah. And documented, we're going to include the link in the show notes, to designate the best festalaun in the country. How did you come across this passion for documenting festalown? It's, I think I love eating that pastry. And I think sometimes if you can get something limited, you want it even more. So you can only get it in February unless you make it yourself. And I was looking forward to it because you have Christmas is over and Easter and summer is like pretty far away. So you have something to celebrate. And it's not that I'm dressing up like the kids, but I'm still eating all the pastries.

1:25:36And so I have this really, really good memory from when I was a kid. My mom didn't bake, but I had this friend and her mom, she baked. And one time we got home from school, we were visiting her and her mom made this like flaky, crusty dough. And she filled it with jam and vanilla cream. and that was the first time I had like that sort of bun, like for Festa Laun. And I remember it so clearly. It was, I might've been like 12 years old. Yeah. And since then, that has been my favorite of the Festa Laun buns. Then I started six years ago and it wasn't that crazy that it is in Copenhagen right now, but it's kind of like a celebration, not of Festa Laun, but of the Danish pastry and people, I think they just want something to look forward to yeah because it's like we have like four hours of sunlight if the sun comes out it's just gray and it's cold and so i think it's a nice way also to like celebrate all the small bakeries and all like yes the craftsmanship that's in like making good pastries yeah it's amazing that you've gone on this journey so how many have you tried over the course of this of this of this guide making and and what what is the guide what do you rank them how does that work no i don't really rank them i think food is um is like a universal language but it tastes different to everybody like music and it's sometimes you like opera sometimes you like hip-hop and it's and i think it's the same with pastries and um so i would never say that something doesn't taste good got it like it might not be for me like i don't like the prunes they put inside yeah so i'm i would never buy something with the prunes but i know a lot of people who love it and i understand why because of the mixture so when i make the guide for copenhagen only we have a lot of good bakeries yeah um so i actually start back in november and i start going through like what do we have of new bakeries and are they going to make a bun next year and what are we gonna do and i make a list and i actually make like a way that i can go visit all the bakeries and then i ask out on my instagram like what can you recommend like what has what is going to be your favorite like festa lounge bun this year in copenhagen so the guide started out in copenhagen and the first year i think i i'm picked up maybe 21 wow uh buns and this year i tasted only in Copenhagen 41.

1:28:19That's amazing. And that's a lot of time that you're traveling around, you're biking around the city. Yeah. And they know you now. They know. I text them before. Yeah. Because a lot of these places are sold out really fast. Yeah. But I also want to tell the experience to the people I send out to the bakeries that this place has a long line, or come early or here you can reserve one online and go pick it up. And so I take all of the buns home. It takes me like six hours to pick them up. And I record for like this time it was like an hour and a half. Wow. So you're tasting them all on the same day.

1:29:03On the same day. That's the best way to do it. Because I think a lot of people, it's easier to go to a bakery and then you can pick it up, taste it, and then you rank it from one to five and you leave. But I think if you have all of them in front of you and then I taste them and I don't really rank them until the end. I taste all of them and I think it changes every year. But my favorite is always vanilla custard and blackcurrant in like a flaky crust. like that those three things together are just like yeah it blows your mind blow your mind um and that's what i say in the beginning like of the guide i was like this is my favorite yeah so if people make that in the bakeries that's the one i'm gonna choose i'm gonna taste so you have kind of this control if it was like a scientific experience that you feel is like always the bait or the baseline i guess it is is is this combination of black currants and and then some don't do it and then they like they want to experiment and they put like I had one with I thought it was no it was yuzu they put yuzu inside but it was so bitter and people see my like just immediate reaction I take it right I'm like oh what is going on here and then I like look inside and I taste it like separately and I put it together and I would be like the yuzu is not for me but i can understand if people like to drink like a negroni drink yeah they like the bitterness i don't like it yeah so they're gonna love that one i like that that point of view so you're you're more like you're doing the work to describe each of these so you're recording a video for each one uh not for each one like the entire tasting yeah and then i put it up in like six episodes that's very very cool could we go over your top five is that possible it's uh i rank the old school one which is the yeasty dough and they all look the same so it's if the is the dough dry or how much you will see when you take a bite of the old school one you will see that it's kind of like it's just a yeasty just the yeasty bun with vanilla custard inside it's similar to a donut in some ways it is actually like to a boston cream boston cream exactly like the the cream filled donut i mean aesthetically it looks just like a donut exactly and it's the same concept you just have so much more flavor and you can see all the vanilla like from the vanilla part like inside the vanilla custard and i looked to that as well and if the cream is like smooth you don't want lumpy and you don't want the the marzipan like paste to be crunchy with sugar and there's so much and what kind of chocolate do they use on top and how big is it and so the number one for the old school is a bakery in nabro which is called rondo and i've tasted that every year and this year was just absolutely amazing they were on they were they're on did they did they change something or is it just no i think they made them smaller actually and i think that they the way they made like the custard and the dough and everything together was just really really nice um what were some other classics that in in and around denmark that we think that come to mind like outside copenhagen yeah sure maybe one outside and one inside let's do it that way the best one i had this year was not in copenhagen oh wow and that surprised me and i'm from copenhagen so i'm like really like biased like everything good is in copenhagen but it was actually in a place in a city called silgeborg and this this um she's a baker and she's really good with sourdough and she makes so many books and that it blew me away her bun was absolutely amazing yeah so i would drive the two and a half hour drive to go get it for it and then let's talk about the actual the more modern the nouveau yeah and you said you're using you're seeing lamination right which is something we see this in the states a lot like the corona comes to mind like ideas of using the croissant dough in a creative way and you brought us one that's a croissant dough topped with cream but like what are you seeing with the modern styles um i i see that people want to experiment more so this one is it's like it's a croissant dough and it's like a tower and they like filled it up inside yeah so it's also like a creation of something it's a little artwork and you can see that if you go to there's uh we have this big hotel called dangletea they have this pastry corner and it's called a maison and their pastry chef she is she is so good she was in top three last year and i tasted them this year and it's you buy a little artwork yeah they're expensive yeah but you can share it and it's really nice um and that's what i see a lot like people really put an effort into it so for the i made a top three and then with a number four which didn't have any like jam or anything in it it was yeah so that was really good as well but the one i brought you was number two and i thought it was black currant and i was like talking about this black currant is amazing with the vanilla cream and um they texted me afterwards it's not black currant it's blueberry oh why didn't i taste that and it's uh and i could taste it afterwards and that was really like so that's what i love about it because it surprised me yeah because i was so like this is what i like i love the black currant and it wasn't black currant so that's when you get surprised yeah and actually the number one was it's called anderson bakery it's very big in japan yeah they make i think they made eight different like buttons yeah and And they are like, it's so aesthetic.

1:35:03It's beautiful. Every time. It's good. Every single time. They're so talented. We were just meeting with the chef, Nick Curtin. And he mentioned Anderson as his favorite. Yeah. And he's a chef. So I feel. They won this year. They won. Yeah. They were number one. Yeah. It's like with all other foods. Yeah. It's the umami. So it's the way you mix stuff. Yeah. It can be too salty or too sweet. And here you have this black curd jam, and it's a little bitter, and you have the custard and the cream is just silky and smooth. And the crust is flaky, but it's not like you can just bite it. Yeah, so that's very good.

1:35:48Every year it's very, very good. I have to check that out. And I really respect your work. Are you doing this for fun? Do you have a sponsor? or like what what's compelling i do it i do it for fun actually like um that's what i thought like a service to the people yeah um and it started out really small and this year a couple of days before i was like i don't know how i'm gonna make it because there's so much there's this word and i can't find it i like telling people of good stuff like i like bringing out good news yeah uh that's why i love making recipes for people and they can make it at home and you send it out and it just lives.

1:36:27It's so Danish in a way. And we've been in this episode, we're talking about Danish culture a lot. And the idea of community is a little different here in Denmark and public service and doing things for your neighbors is done without, you're selfless. You're committing your time to help others. And it feels very Danish in a way. I like that you feel like that. Crystal, thank you so much for sharing these buns. Say it one more time. Festelance, probably. Festelance. Yeah. Kind of got that right. I love your passion for this. It's really impressive. Really appreciate you sharing this with us. Thank you for letting me join.

1:37:08This episode was produced with support from Visit Denmark. Thanks to Mads Ostergaard and Maria Thustenbleg of Visit Denmark. And thanks to Hotel Bella Grande. And most of all, thank you to all the chefs and journalists who helped us tell the story of Copenhagen food. Make sure to check out the map of places to eat and drink in the show notes.

1:37:33This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skirzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.

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