75 Best Restaurants in Denmark

This restaurant is run by three friends, and a meal here feels like a lively, informal dinner party at a friend's place. The dishes—which typically consist of seven snacks and either four or seven courses based on availability of seasonal produce—are internationally inspired. The food is served family style, and the light, minimalistic decor resembles that of a stylish Scandinavian apartment—so much so that the Saturday brunches often turn into parties.

Dark oak tables, wooden floors, and chairs with lamb-fur accents are a rustic interpretation of Nordic luxury that's appropriate to the setting—a former warehouse on the waterfront. This restaurant is at the vanguard of new Nordic cuisine and Denmark's most highly acclaimed. Chef Rene Redzepi and his innovative team pair the best local ingredients like berries, mushrooms, vegetables, and herbs with game, Jutland marsh lamb, Greenlandic musk ox, and Faroe Islands scallops. Dishes from the 20-course tasting menu can be served with wine pairings or a juice menu for an additional charge. Service is irreproachable. Given the hype, it's nearly impossible to book a table—reservations are taken a full three months in advance. So plan well ahead, and be prepared to settle for lunch instead of dinner. The chef plans to close noma after New Year's Eve 2016 and reopen it in 2017 as an urban farm-to-table restaurant in a new location.

Drawing from the tenets of the New Nordic philosophy, the chef at this lamb and seafood restaurant sources his ingredients locally and fills the tasting menu with simple, earthy meals like langoustine bisque, smoked salmon, poached cod, and his famous braised lamb. 

Zealand’s largest fishmonger has been in the same family for three generations. You can stop by to buy fish and delicacies, and sit down on the benches outside of the store with your sushi, grilled fish fillets, or seafood platter.

When international foodies visit Copenhagen, AOC is high on the list of restaurants to visit. The restaurant, which has two Michelin stars, offers one tasting menu with a strong focus on sensory pleasure, Nordic produce, and imaginative cooking.

This fishmonger doubles as a lunch spot. Whether you're in the mood for smoked salmon and oysters to go or fried fish fillet with fries on the harbor, you'll find it at this beloved local institution.

This ivy-clad café that occupies a corner in the middle of Aarhus’s Latin Quarter is one of the best places in the town to people-watch even if you decide just to have a coffee. You can get dessert or even a full meal as well.

Models, movie stars, and musicians have been hanging out at this Parisian-inspired café since 1984, along with the rest of Aarhus. The beloved institution serves café classics such as croque monsieur sandwiches, but many patrons don't come for the food but just to linger over a cup of coffee or glass of wine by the marbled bar, in the cozy courtyard, or by the heated outdoor terrace tables.

Located on one of Christianshavn’s quiet backstreets, this café serves traditional Danish food, with plenty of aquavit to go with it. It’s been doing so for more than 150 years, and the beautiful setting perfectly matches the food.

At this charming café with a garden patio, the kitchen satisfies its many patrons with delicious Danish-French dishes. Brunch is served daily, as are a good variety of sandwiches, tapas, vegetarian options, warm dishes like quiche Lorraine and soups, and children's plates.

Located in an atmospheric basement, complete with brick walls, velvet dining chairs, and low ceilings, this restaurant might look like a speakeasy jazz club in New York, but it’s one of the best brasseries in Aalborg. The chef, who also runs the popular restaurant Applaus, mixes Danish produce with French bistro cooking, bringing both to perfection. The four-course menu is a bargain, but guests are also welcome to sample the à la carte menu. 

If the stunning decor in this light-filled restaurant with great views of Vesterbrogade doesn't transport you to the Mediterranean, the food surely will. Grilled Halloumi and seafood, sumptuous hummus, watermelon-and-feta salads, and a sorbet made from Greek yogurt with olive oil and sea salt are some of the highlights on the menu, which is served family style at night. 

This combined farmers' market, café, and bar is the main meeting point on the town’s central square. Stop by for local products---such as locally produced clothes, pottery, whiskey, soap, mustard, vinegar, or beer---or for a meal in the atmospheric café.

Built within the courtyards of several 17th-century homes, this popular restaurant has walls of ancient stone topped by a sliding glass roof. Though the menu is mostly French, you can still order inexpensive smørrebrød for lunch.

This café-restaurant serves its own beer produced on the premises, with up to six varieties on tap and many more bottled. The café serves sandwiches and a popular fresh-vegetable-laden "brewery burger." A quality carvery buffet, with freshly sliced roasted meats and salads, and an à la carte menu are available in the restaurant. Try the classic pork shank marinated in brown ale at either the restaurant or the café.

This atmospheric restaurant housed in the picturesque wine cellar of a Renaissance-era house (it was built in 1624) is a favorite among those who treasure its old-world ambiance and well-priced traditional cuisine. Copious plates of Danish classics—smoked herring, caviar, hearty vegetable-laden venison stew, baked local salmon, and roasted potatoes with parsley dressing—are served à la carte or buffet style under vaulted ceilings. The jovial atmosphere and ever-flowing beer and wine may help guests overlook the indifferent service.

The name stands for "basic formula," but this French-Danish restaurant is anything but basic. The chefs Rune Jochumsen and Kristian Moeller serve classic French cuisine based on seasonal Danish ingredients in an interior of leather, glass, marble, and steel. The wine list includes around 400 varieties; the majority are classic French, with an impressive selection from Burgundy.

One of Denmark’s most celebrated and uncompromising chefs, Wassim Hallal, concocts brilliant dishes at this Michelin-starred restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of a beautiful garden and the sea. The menus are a tour de force of local ingredients and sky-high gastronomic ambitions. The restaurant is in a former staff lodge for the royal palace. 

This was the first restaurant to open on Aalborg’s waterfront nine years ago, and it’s still the best place in the city for French-Japanese fusion cuisine. It makes perfect sense to surrender to an evening of endless fish and seafood dishes while looking out at the Limfjord, and the service and wine list are as impeccable as the many small dishes.

Locals stop by this small café for well-made flat whites and homemade bread with local cheese. They also come for the drinks, including excellent glasses of wine and beer that's been brewed in the brewery in the back room. On weekday nights the café hosts wine and beer tastings, board-game tournaments, and nights devoted to Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering.

The ice creams and the pancakes are the real people pleasers at this small café, but the open-faced sandwiches and light lunch meals are popular too. There is outdoor seating available.

This small izakaya (informal Japanese pub with grub) and sake bar is the best place in Denmark to get an authentic taste of Japan. The dining room is simple and beautiful, with its light, wooden furniture. Small dishes range from sashimi to a seasonal seaweed salad or charcoal-grilled lamb tenderloin with tempura veggies.

Bornholm’s ice-cream game is strong, with several artisanal producers, but this family-run ice-cream parlor and café takes the prize. That’s because of both the ice cream---organic milk from Bornholm is paired with local fruit, berries, and herbs---and the location in a former smokehouse located directly on the coast with a beautiful view of the sea and cliffs. Besides ice cream, the café serves good coffee, a few light dishes, and wine, cocktails, and beer.

At this trendy and inventive Asian Michelin-starred restaurant, the fragrances may well whet your appetite for such typical Thai street snacks as lotus-flower chips, satay, and fish cakes. Gilded Buddhas grace the walls, hand-woven wicker chairs made from water hyacinth beckon, and cream-color bamboo lamps illuminate the space. Kiin Kiin's famous Table 9, in a discreet corner, offers snug seclusion for romantics.

Five centuries ago this was a vineyard; now it's the site of one of Scandinavia's finest restaurants, and the oldest Michelin restaurant in Denmark. Chef Mark Lundgaard's French- and Danish-inspired dishes employ local ingredients and are served in a medieval subterranean space with whitewashed walls and vaulted ceilings.

Offering a menu of French classics including snails from Burgundy, foie gras, steak au poivre, sole meunière, and crème brûlée, Maison is decked out with a zinc bar, marble countertops, and French bistro chairs. Frankly, it's a dream of a brasserie, one of the best in Copenhagen.

Locals get into heated arguments about which smokehouse on Bornholm is the best, but most can agree that Nordbornholms Røgeri, with its great views of the sea and an idyllic beach, is one of the best. The buffet—featuring smoked, baked, fried, and fresh fish—is popular, but you also can also order smaller à la carte dishes.

Among the dozens of restaurants and cafés lining Nyhavn, Nyhavns Færgekro is one of the most atmospheric, with moderately priced Danish treats served in a cozy dining room. Its windows date back to the building's early incarnation as a home to the shipping company White Star Line, which ominously sold tickets for the Titanic.

In this quaint harbor setting, you'll be able to savor fresh fish done right. You won't go wrong with the au gratin fish of the day, accompanied by Skagen ham and a red-onion compote. The restaurant displays numerous replicas of figureheads that had washed ashore—the flotsam from the many shipwrecks that have happened around Skagen over the years. The originals are in a museum in Göteborg, but even the copies are worth admiring.

Given its location in the middle of the Latin Quarter, surrounded by century-old university buildings, it makes sense that this combined café and bookstore is always packed with students and professors as well as other book lovers. The café serves good coffee and affordable, honest food. You can order everything from a roll with cheese to a blue-cheese burger; and the bookstore sells a good selection of old and new books.