Smørrebrød restaurant in Indre By, Copenhagen

Restaurant Palægade

Leave Room for the Walnut Cart

3.5 of 5

Palægade opened in 2016 with the stated aim of making the best smørrebrød in Denmark, which is a sentence you only say out loud in Copenhagen if you are ready to be checked. The rule from the first day was that everything is made in house. The rye bread. The remoulade, built on pickles they put up themselves. The curry blend, designed around the herring, which sits in a vinegar brine strong enough to soften the bones. In season the potatoes come from the Funen farm of restaurant manager Johan Henrik's parents.

The lunch card goes from roast beef with remoulade to caviar without blinking. Vadouvan curry herring with fried egg and apple. Mustard herring with egg yolk cream and dry-cured bacon. Fried plaice from the coastal fishermen with remoulade. Hand-peeled shrimp on crisp toast, and if the week has been kind, the same toast with a fried egg and caviar. The beer has to pass a house three-pint test, meaning you should want a third, and the akvavits were made with the Radius distillery at a gentler strength and with no added sugar.

Then the trolley arrives. A joiner-built cake cart in dark walnut rolls up with cream cakes, chocolate cake, fruit tarts and macarons, stacked on blue Danish Christmas plates, and only the pastry chefs are allowed to fill it. Some people come in just for that and a coffee. Order herring, fish and one piece of meat, in that order. Then surrender to the cart. Resistance has never once worked.

Order this

Vadouvan curry herring with fried egg, apple and capers, Fried plaice with remoulade and lemon, Hand-peeled shrimp on toast, Something from the cake trolley

The damage

$$$

Go

Lunch, booked, arriving before the 14:45 last seating

Find it

Palægade 8, 1261 København K

Website

formelbgroup.dk