Copenhagen Cooking Festival, Denmark, Celebrates New Nordic Cuisine
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Now in its seventh year, Copenhagen Cooking turns the Danish capital into a giant food fest of Nordic taste for ten days.
It was only in 2004 that the manifesto for the New Nordic Cuisine was unleashed on an unsuspecting gourmet public. Now Noma has just been awarded world’s best restaurant for the second year running and the restaurant scene in Copenhagen is booming. Nordic food, of course, is a feature of many menus but there’s also a host of other cuisines on offer. The Copenhagen Cooking festival runs for 10 days in the middle of August and this year featured 85 events including gourmet street festivals, food walks, cooking schools and Michelin-quality food at bargain prices.
For the “Taste of Copenhagen”, the city’s best restaurants, including Michelin starred establishments, offered special menus at special prices. I was too late to get into Noma, but did manage a special apple tasting menu at SALT and very good it was too. There was also the Nordic Taste event where 30 restaurants offered tapas-sized tastings, with the emphasis on local produce and food traditions.
A new project this year was the MAD Foodcamp held in a hay bale-fenced meadow on Refshale Island on the outskirts of Copenhagen. The brainchild of Noma’s founders, Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer, their chosen theme was the Plant Kingdom. The plan was to get together farmers, food producers, chefs, innovators and foodies to come up with new opportunities and ideas for the food we eat.
And if this wasn’t enough to tickle your taste buds, there was even a “New Nordic in a Glass” event at the Gilt cocktail bar. Taking the New Nordic Kitchen manifesto into the drinks realm, Henrik Hammer and Peter Altenburg have created cocktails using ingredients only found in Scandinavia, apart from the gin. A big hit was “Bitter and Sour Honey”, containing gooseberry juice, lemon balm and Danish honey. Even the Forest Martini replaced lemon with birch juice, infused with elderflower, and was none the worse for it. Actually it was rather delicious.
The New Nordic cuisine is not in competition with French, Italian, Chinese or other cuisines. Rather, its aim is to work from the bottom up, to counter global junk and fast food cultures, and develop a lifestyle which will be better for the environment, public health and Nordic society as a whole. On the evidence of Copenhagen Cooking it seems to be working.
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Copenhagen Cooking
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