Alchemist

Dinner in Fifty Acts

4 of 5

Rasmus Munk does not run a restaurant so much as stage a play you happen to eat. Alchemist sits out on Refshaleøen, the old shipyard island, and the evening runs up to fifty impressions over four to six hours, moving through several rooms including a planetarium dome where the ceiling becomes part of the meal. The restaurant itself warns that this is not the place for a business dinner or a nervous first date. Believe it.

The dishes are built to provoke. One is a jelly eye modelled on the chef's own, with caviar, mussels and razor clams hiding behind the pupil, a comment on surveillance. Another is a confection shaped like a coffin, a comment on child labour. The technique is serious, the visuals are startling, and sometimes the message is louder than the flavour. I have eaten enough earnest food to be wary of a sermon on a plate. This one earns most of it, because the cooking holds up when the lights come back on.

Tickets cost 5,600 kroner before drinks and go on sale roughly every three months for parties of two, four or six. Bigger tables are easier to land. The Botanica non-alcoholic pairing runs 3,000. Munk also founded JunkFood, a fund that has delivered more than half a million hot meals to homeless people in Copenhagen since 2020, which tells you something about where the theatre money ends up. Join the waitlist, clear the evening, and leave cynicism at the door for six hours.

Order this: The full Alchemist Experience, The Botanica non-alcoholic pairing, Whatever they hand you in the dome
The damage: $$$$
Go: The day tickets drop, then clear an entire evening
Find it: Refshalevej 173C, 1432 København K
Website: alchemist.dk