7 Best Restaurants in Denmark

One of Copenhagen’s most charming cafés isn’t just located by the water but directly on it. This combined café, restaurant, and bar is floating on Christianshavn Kanal, giving it one of the best locations in the city. Stop by for coffee, light lunch, or dinner, or just a glass of wine. It’s closed in the fall and spring but usually open in December, when the enterprising owner adds a roof, walls, and a wood-burning stove to the platform.

It looks like an American diner, but the menu at this local favorite reads more like that of a French café. Stop by for coffee and croissants in the morning, a croque madame for lunch, or just to have a drink and people-watch.

This wine bar and restaurant is known for its tasty dinners and natural wines as well as for its sauna and bathing jetties, which are impossibly popular with Copenhageners on summer days. The restaurant looks a bit like a boat shed, and dinner is cooked in a small kitchen outdoors. From October to April the restaurant moves indoors and scales up the culinary ambitions with a tasting menu.

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.

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.

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.

The snug corner restaurant is situated in the same cozy, cobblestoned neighborhood as Hans Christian Andersen's birthplace. It serves seasonal Italian- and French-inspired dishes using Danish ingredients, such as grilled redfish with boiled potatoes, and is also a popular brunch and lunch spot.