When I arrived in Copenhagen for my spring semester abroad, I did not even notice that I walked right past Amman’s airport restaurant, an outlet of downtown’s most famous place for Denmark’s most famous food. Smørrebrød is a broad category of traditional Nordic cuisine, which was rather mysterious to me. It is not pronounced “smore broad” but rather closer to “smoe boe”, and a direct translation from Danish is not very accurate at all; “butter bread” doesn’t describe these decorative dishes at all.

“Decorative” might be an understatement here, as I would rather think of the underlying slice of rye bread as being the chef’s canvas, where he lays on a collage of ingredients that are as pleasing to the eye as tasty to the palate. The brown rye bread sets off the meat possibilities which come next, traditionally either a strong fish such as pickled herring or smoked lox, or else a mound of beef tartare with the bright yellow raw egg yolk shining on top. While I preferred the herring (shying away from red meat), I certainly enjoyed sampling some of the New Nordic innovations such as prawns, crab, tuna, and even carpaccio.

The vegetable ingredients are often the most attractive given the laciness of dill or the stodginess of avocado, or anything in season.  These vegetables generally divide into two classes. First there are the staples such as diced onions and capers, obligatory in perhaps 80 percent of recipes. But then come the charismatic ones such as the aforementioned dill, or chives, and perhaps a clever slice of cucumber or radish delicately carved and sculpted. These higher-class vegetables seem to always land on top with just the right angular attitudes, which I doubt come from being tossed at random.

I got my smørrebrød briefing one morning in January , and drew lots with my fellow classmates to determine my destination before setting off from school into the chaos of the Copenhagen lunch hour. The target of my research was the Slotskælderen Hos Gitte Kik restaurant, whose Michelin star and location across

from Parliament attract the sort of official clientele which appreciates the more traditional forms of these dishes rather than the Neo-Nordic.

It wasn’t always this way, these decorative meals for the power elites. Smørrebrød’s origins were more humble in the fog of earlier times: simple finger-food for field workers on limited budget, for whom rye bread and liver paste were the most affordable ingredients. But this all changed in 1883 when the Nimb restaurant, in the famous Tivoli Gardens, served it as equal to their fancier Nordic dishes.

But where can a girl go to find some less traditional smørrebrød? For fancy New Nordic, the famous Schønnemann restaurant would seem a likely candidate, but their high-quality ingredients seemed a bit lost in the concentrated saltiness of their sauces.

Fortunately, on my third outing, I finally connected with Amman’s, the parent restaurant of the very same airport outlet I had totally ignored on my first day in Denmark. It was marvelous.

I had great experiences testing all of these smørrebrød offerings;  now I enjoy  making my own seafood version.  I prefer it without any sauce or butter, and relish the opportunity to decorate it with a favorite fresh salad or fruit.

 

Ratnasari Lusaka is an Ada, Fall 2017, and food is one of the important parts of her future career, as her professional experience is mostly in event planning. Thus, she took the Anthropology of Food class in Copenhagen as my study abroad program. The New Nordic style of cuisine has given her new appreciation for thoughtfully including local ingredients, particularly seasonal produce.
Her tasting experiences with New Nordic smørrebrød were part of her explorations of a new genre of food where decoration and ingredient are intermingled in ways that leave plenty of opportunity to innovate for years to come.

 

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