Denmark is Expensive. Is it Worth it?

Denmark is Expensive. Is it Worth it?

00:00 Intro
00:18 How Denmark is different from my other vacations
01:05 Contradictions of Denmark
01:56 Public Transit
02:43 Why we stayed in Ørestad
03:45 Restaurants in Copenhagen
05:50 Institutional Food
08:10 Peace and Quiet
08:40 Have a Blanket!
10:21 Møn Island (Countryside)
12:39 Why Denmark is not for everyone

Copenhagen Restaurants and Bakeries:
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Marv & Ben (bib gourmand)
https://www.marvogben.dk/
Raw mackerel with green strawberries and green sauce (mussel juice, whey, spinach, dill). Hake with hollandaise peas, and caviar. Steak tartare. Lamb with roasted cabbage and broccoli. Yogurt ice-cream with raspberries. It was all amazing (except for the slightly tough lamb). The raspberries were the most fragrant I’ve ever had. The mackerel combination was outstanding. Peas and caviar were a great pairing. All the vegetables were really stunning.

Fiskebar (bib gourmand)

Kødbyens Fiskebar

Fish and chips made with slightly smoked cod (great remoulade made with cauliflower, cabbage, and whole mustard seeds), squid “noodles” in chicken dashi (insanely tender and flavorful raw squid), raw mackerel with radishes and raspberries and raw kampachi were great. Tuna with black garlic aioli (I didn’t get to taste the tuna, but aioli was amazing). Tiny shrimp with green aioli. Hispi cabbage (slightly grilled lettuce) with potatoes and trout roe — caviar and salad is the best!

Restaurant Mes
https://www.restaurantmes.dk/
Good, but not amazing except for the main dish which made us lick our plates: veal brisket with BBQ sauce, celery root puree, and mushroom foam.

Gasoline Grill
It’s a chain, so if you ever need a burger, just look around 🙂
Good burgers — very good brioche buns and flavorful, tender patties, but not as drippy and meaty as I would ideally like. Excellent fries with vinegar salt powder.

Selma

Forside

Good sandwiches, particularly shrimp

Restaurant Møntergade

Home

Really excellent herring sandwich, but only ok others

Kokkeriet (one star)
https://www.kokkeriet.dk/
The only terrible meal. Bad textures (even the bread tasted as if it was gluten free). Fried foods served cold. Sometimes underseasoned. Really tough steak. Bad combinations of ingredients. Two good fish dishes (langoustine with shellfish reduction and hake with kale). Everything else was very poor.

Bakeries:
Juno
https://www.instagram.com/juno_the_bakery/?hl=en
The line can be long, but it’s worth it. The first time we came, they were out of plain croissants by 9:30, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We tried their strawberry croissant muffin, poppy seed covered croissant filled with almond cream, cardamom brioche, and lemon cake. All were amazing and not too sweet. On the second day, we knew to email them the day ahead to place our croissant order. The plain croissants are very good, but a tad burnt on the outside to my taste.

Hart

Homepage

Very good basic croissants, but the cardamom kouign-amann is to die for

Andersen bakery

Forside

Pretty good, but not comparable to Juno and Hart. They were right next to our hotel, so given the convenience it was a good place.

Møn resources:
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Good supermarket and wine: SuperBrugsen in Stege

Good bakery for bread and occasional produce item: Øbageren in Stege (good coffee and the best cheese sandwich)

Apple juice and occasional berries and figs: Tjørnemosegaard fæld selv juletræer & Møn honning

Produce from Copenhagen: Vibækgård in Stege

Fish truck comes to Stege center on Saturday mornings at 10am (sometimes farmers come too)

ND122 https://www.nd122.dk/ — very nice restaurant on Møn Island (occasionally a tad too much salt even for me, so not for salt sensitive people)

Fri Bike Shop in Stege — very affordable bikes, no need to reserve

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This summer, I spent 5 days in Copenhagen and a week in a quiet town of Stege in rural Denmark. And I thought why don’t I make a video and tell my viewers about it, so that I can relive this experience.

My typical European vacations involve seeing a lot of old pretty things: castles, churches, quaint villages, stuff like that. It’s kind of like going to a museum. Sure, it’s pretty, but it’s not like you go through those villages thinking, “I am loving this cobblestone street. I wonder if that would work in our driveway.

And did you see the dungeon in that castle? I love how they incorporated torture into their daily life.” But in Denmark, everyday I’d have some experience that made me think, “Isn’t that cool how they do that! Can we do that too?” Denmark manages to balance ideas that are normally contradictory.

Beauty and comfort, productivity and relaxation, socialism and entrepreneurship, German precision and French Joie de vivre. For all their beauty and deliciousness, I could never see myself living in France, Italy, or Spain, but Denmark made me feel like I wish this was my home.

It felt like a place designed by usability engineers and since at some point in my life I used to be one, I found this focus on user experience really moving. I know that my channel is about food, but public transit in Denmark is so phenomenal that I have to start with that.

Not once during the trip did I wish I could take a taxi. We bought a 5 day pass at the airport and from there on things were effortless. You walk into a station without scanning your ticket because it’s an honor system and within a minute or two, your train pulls up.

It’s clean, it’s quiet, and it’s uncrowded even during rush hour. Getting around Copenhagen felt as relaxing as if we had a private chauffeur and cost less than the subway in New York. When you’ll read about Copenhagen neighborhoods, Orestad is always mentioned as an afterthought

Because it’s a newly developed neighborhood slightly outside the city. We stayed there because it was way more affordable. Our hotel in Orestad cost about the same as an equivalent hotel on our recent trip to Sevilla and pretty much nothing in Copenhagen costs the same as it does in Sevilla, so yeah,

It will save you a lot of money. The Metro stop was at the doorstep of our hotel, and we could get to the center in 15 min. Keep in mind that Copenhagen is not Tokyo or London. It’s a large city that feels like a small city.

Even if you are outside the center, getting around is very easy. So, I am glad that we didn’t splurge on the hotel and saved our money for the food. Yes, the food is expensive, but the quality is unbelievable.

I am not big on Micheline starred places, so we didn’t go to Noma or Geranium or any other $600 per person restaurants. Copenhagen’s sweet spot is about $100 per person. That’s what a dinner at a bib gourmand restaurant would cost you.

Bib Gourmand is a Michelin category of restaurants that serve excellent food and offer good value for the money. Basically, just yummy without the theatrics. Yes, in Copenhagen bib gourmand restaurants are more expensive than in most countries, but the quality of both the food and service is unbelievable.

I expected Denmark to have great seafood, but I didn’t expect produce that’s on par with California or Spain. For example, who knew that Denmark can grow figs? Yeah — really good ones. And I don’t think I’ve had raspberries, blackberries, and cabbages that were as tasty as in Denmark anywhere else.

Another big surprise for me was the quality of service. A nice sit down meal in Spain or France is lovely, but very very slow. It might take 20 minutes just to get the menu. Your food might arrive, but your wine pairing might not show up for another 5 minutes.

Basically, you need to be patient. In Denmark, we were never rushed, but also never bored. The meals had perfect pacing. Nothing was ever confused or forgotten. The servers were friendly and had a great sense of humor, but there was never that saccharine

Sweetness you sometimes get from American waiters who are working for tips. If you want a list of the restaurants and bakeries that we liked, look in the description below. But the biggest food surprise of this trip for me was institutional food.

By that I mean food in the museums, airports, and other places with a captive audience. After a few days in Copenhagen, we took a day trip to the Louisiana Art Museum located 40 minutes north of the city.

When I got off the train and looked around, I realized that our only food option was going to be the museum cafe. I can’t say I was thrilled at that prospect. Many of my favorite museums in the US serve horrible food. Their restaurants might be pretty, but the food is overpriced and mediocre.

The food in Louisiana was a revelation. It was my favorite lunch in Denmark and no more expensive than our lunches in regular restaurants. I didn’t get to eat at the Design museum, but just look at their pastries!

If I didn’t already fill up on the pastries at the amazing Juno bakery, I would have loved to taste one of these. I asked the barista where they got their baked goods and he said they made everything in house.

I told him how surprised I was at the quality of food in Danish museums and he proudly explained how hard they’ve been working on improving the quality. He said that Danish museums noticed that a trip to the museum is a special occasion. People don’t just want to see the exhibits.

They want to make a day of it and have a meal in a pleasant place with their family and friends. Well, dah. That’s true in the US too. What’s astonishing to me is that Danish museums chose to raise the quality, not the price.

I have only spent 2 weeks in Denmark so this might be a superficial observation, but it seems to me that Danes view quality as a part of their identity. Not just quality of food, but quality of everything.

You know how Americans view freedom as a birthright, I think Danes view quality as a birthright. And Denmark was quiet. I started dreading going out to eat in the US, because I always leave with a headache. The restaurants are so so loud.

If the diners aren’t making enough noise, the management cranks up the music. In Denmark, the restaurants and all public places are quieter. It’s the first time I spent 5 days in a big city and didn’t feel exhausted. Another thing that knocked my socks off were low tech solutions to everyday problems.

If you get chilly while eating outside, many restaurants in Denmark give you a blanket. How awesome is that? Whenever we eat out in LA, it always drives me nuts how they turn on the heat lamps as soon as it drops below 70. First of all, it’s a waste of energy.

Second of all, whoever is closest to that lamp gets slightly roasted. To me, they are always too hot and uncomfortable. A blanket allows each guest to be at their perfect temperature and doesn’t waste energy. At first, I was wondering if this is a hardship for the restaurants to wash all those blankets.

Well, they don’t wash them after each customer. After you use it, you put it back in a basket where you got it. I can see how some Americans would find that unacceptable because we are somewhat squeamish. But think about it. Restaurants don’t wash their chairs or the pillows on the benches between customers,

So why would they wash the blankets? Here is another low tech solution for you. A tree in Frederiksberg Park where the kids can hang their pacies when it’s time to give them up. I think creating this rite of passage can make most toddlers somewhat excited about it.

I wish we had a tree like this when my kids were little. And on this adorable note, why don’t we leave Copenhagen and move to rural Denmark. We rented a car and drove south to a small town called Stege on the island of Mons where we spent a week.

It was a gorgeous place with emerald fields, wild flower meadows, grazing sheep, and dramatic white cliffs. It was a perfect place to hike, bike, and relax. Our airbnb was a dream. The kitchen had a scale, a mixer, a blender, 5 cutting boards, tons of pots and pans.

It felt like borrowing a friend’s house. Here we cooked all our meals. Surprisingly it was no more expensive than cooking in Boston. The prices for house rentals in the countryside were incredibly reasonable too. So don’t think that everything in Denmark is expensive. Some things are very affordable.

The part that surprised me in the countryside was a complete lack of farmer’s markets, farm stands, or fish markets. After the embarrassment of riches at the central market in Copenhagen, I expected to find the same in the countryside, but that was not the case.

All the locals that we asked about produce sent us to Super Brugsen, which looked like a perfectly ordinary supermarket. But appearances can be deceiving. Denmark has a lot of superb local produce, they just happen to sell it right in the supermarket.

The produce in Super Brugsen was better than at my farmer’s market in Boston. We did eventually find a few hidden farm stands and an excellent fish truck. So, in case you are going to this neck of the woods, check out all my resources in the description below the video.

My favorite activity at Stege was to bike around the lake in the morning and to stop by Obageren for the best cheese sandwich and coffee. That was one big difference between our trip to Denmark and our recent trip to Andalucia.

In Denmark, we found good bread and coffee even in the most remote and unassuming places. If Denmark is such a perfect place, why don’t more people go there on vacation? I can think of a few reasons. It never gets warm enough to swim.

I saw many Danish people swimming, but most people would find their waters a bit chilly). Since none of us like the beach, Denmark’s temperate climate is a great feature. The whole time we were there, it was 70 for the high and 60 for the low. We were extremely lucky that it barely rained.

I hear that’s the exception and not the rule. Since most people like hot and sunny places, Denmark might not make them very happy. Denmark is also pricey. If you are coming from New York, London, LA, or Tokyo, you’ll find these prices perfectly reasonable. Here are some examples.

The difference is that New York and LA offer some cheap food. It might not be good quality food, but it will be cheap. Denmark doesn’t seem to do that. As a poor college student backpacking through Europe, this would be a very difficult place

To eat, but as a family of 4 who just spent $4000 on airfare to get us all to Europe, these prices didn’t make much of a dent in our travel budget. Have you ever been to Denmark? How was it?

Or maybe you’ve been to a completely different place whose way of life left a lasting impression on you. Let me know in the comments. Here are more thought provoking videos for you to check out and if you are ever in the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.