denmark hygge - Consuming LA

Denmark is ranked every year as the happiest country in the world. With the amazing food scene they have there, this is hardly a surprise. My daughter and I recently visited Copenhagen for the first time and, in addition to falling in love with this beautiful Scandanavian metropolis, we had one of the best and happiest meals of our lives at a mind-blowing restaurant called Kadeau.

Dinner at Kadeau involves a fifteen course tasting menu celebrating the tiny Danish wilderness island of Bornholm, where Kadeau’s sister restaurant resides and from where many of the ingredients have been sourced and harvested. There are savory tarts of king crab, tomato, caramelized cream and sugar kelp, as well as flower-shaped ice bowls cradling mini apples spiced with black currant leaf, rhubarb root and silver fir. There is homemade bread roasted with herb butter infused with cherry wood embers, as well as hay-roasted slices of celeriac on beds of white asparagus sauce which are whimsically (and, yes, deliciously!) peppered with wood ants.

Every dish is amazing and the experience is transcendent; a brilliant blend of creative culinary mastery and Danish hygge (the cozy enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures). Service is impeccable and, if you play your cards rights, you can get a tour of the kitchen, hang out with the friendly chefs and hear about the philosophy of the restaurant. Dinner at Kadeau is, just by itself, worth the trip to Copenhagen.