Scandi Sips and Sweets Treats

The Danish Love for pastries dates all the way back to the mid 19th century when a strike amongst Danish bakers led to a shortage of skilled Labours. This resulted in bakers from Austria coming to Denmark with the unique technique of incorporating butter into dough to create flaky layered delights, as well as the addition of custards and Jams to create exceptional flavour combinations. Now, deeply ingrained in the Danish culture and apart of daily life, there is “bageri” on every street in Copenhagen.  

On my Weekend trip, it was essential we visited a couple to see if they lived up to our expectations. These included:  

Hart Bageri  

The previous pastry chef of the award-winning restaurant in Copenhagen, Noma, Richard Hart started his own venture of Hart bakery in 2018 alongside Talia Richard-Carvajal in the pursuit of bringing both style and substance with their bakes. Now, with 10 bakeries across Copenhagen, the pairs initial ideology of “Sprezzatura”, an Italian saying that refers to having an innate nonchalance to conceal the labour and effort exerted, in order to appear effortless really does shine through when you visit, with the perfected pastries labelled by card and simple handwriting, paired with the coffee machine completely covered with contrastingly colourful stickers.  

Address: Gammel Kongevej 109 Frederiksberg, DK-1850 

Coffee- 8/10 

Huge Pain au chocolat- 9/10 

Service-9/10  

Ambience- 7/10 

Total Price- £10 

 

Lille  

Located in the old industrial area, Refshaleøen, Lille is a bit further out of the city but it is definitely worth the cycle over the harbour. Lille prides themselves on solely working with local farmers and fishermen to ensure they maintain their goal of creating good food with good ingredients that are grown or raised with keeping the planet and people in mind throughout their farming processes. We went on a Saturday morning so of course it was very busy, but the queue did move quite fast. The interior of Lille had a rustic vibe and long tables that you could share with other customers. Here is where we were introduced to the quintessential ‘bole med smør og ost’ or ‘BMO’ for short which is essentially bread, butter and cheese but the combination of the fresh sourdough with homemade butter paired with a simple cheese is so good. One thing I would say, they have a very limited coffee menu of just filtered coffee or iced filtered coffee, which was a bit disappointing.  

Address: Refshalevej 213B, 1432 København, Denmark 

Coffee- 5/10 

BMO - 9/10  

Berliner donut- 8/10  

Service- 7/10  

Ambience- 8/10 

Total price- £11 

Andersen&Maillard  

Escaping from the lashing rain into the cosy, warm Andersen & Maillard coffee shop instantly made the place feel so comforting. They had a vast selection of pastries of course, made by another former pastry chef of Noma, Milton Abel and sensational coffee which is roasted on site. The coffee was so good I had two, although i would say that the coffee was definitely more expensive than the any other place, with an oat latte costing £6 which I did not realise at the time!  Of course, like any good Danish establishment, BMOs were on the menu, although Andersen & Maillard had a range of different breads to choose from such as poppy seed, sesame seed, sourdough etc, which was a good addition.  

Address: Nørrebrogade 62, 2200 København N, Denmark 

Coffee- 10/10 

BMO- 7/10  

Almond Croissant- 6/10  

Service- 9/10

Ambience- 10/10  

Total Price- £16