Eating Our Way Through Denmark

On Thursday we decided to take a 4 hour food and cultural city walking tour starting at 10 AM. This tour is operated by "Copenhagen Food Tours". We had a great time and would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Copenhagen. If you want more details, check out their web site: www.CphFoodTours.dk

Maria was our guide. What a coincidence, she just returned in January from a 5 month stay in Elk Horn, Iowa. She worked at The Danish Immigrant Museum while she was there: dkmuseum.org It was fun to hear her good stories about Iowa. She hadn't realize how much there is to learn about John Deere and their tractors.

The tour started at a new green market that promotes local farmers and food producers, including specialty foods from around Denmark. Our first stop was a cheese maker that uses organic and sustainable processes. We tried 3 kinds of cheese and our favorite was the Danish bleu cheese. (we bought some of it later for a snack at our apartment, using the last of our Danish kroners)

this stand features products from the island of Bornholm (southeast of Copenhagen). We had a variety of tasting, including rhubarb juice, honey akvavit, and black licorice. We liked the rhubarb juice best and the akvavit certainly had a kick to it.

Here is the smørrebrød (open faced sandwich) sampler we had at Aamanns. Open faced sandwiches are very typical of Denmark, but Aamanns has taken it to another level. As you can see, each of them was different and all of them were delicious. The ingredients used included smoked mackerel, chicken and asparagus, and a meatball.

Here we are before cleaning our plates.

The rhubarb here is growing bigger than Roxanne. Unfortunately for Dan Benson they wouldn't let us pick any.

This is the botanical gardens, where we stopped to enjoy Æbleau dessert wine from Vineyard Skærsøgaard, the first authorized vineyard in Denmark. It is an apple wine. Apples are very popular in Denmark, where they raise a large number of varieties.

A nice view crossing one of the waterways that wind through the city. This is near the main hospital in Copenhagen, where almost all of the babies are born.

Carlsberg beer dominates the country, but microbreweries are now very popular too. The founder, J. C. Jacobsen, and his son Carl ( the company and beer are named after him), were very philanthropic. They contributed extensively to the community, including museums, and the botanical gardens.

This beer is from the Nørrebro Bryghus, a local microbrewery that makes all its beers on the premises. This one is called Kongen af Danmark, a Belgian style candy beer that is made with the aniseed flavored 'King of Denmark' drop from the candy company we will visit later in the tour. We enjoyed the distinctive flavor.

We sampled two other types of beer. We had Sommør Porter, which is a light bodied porter, and Stuykman Wit, inspired by the traditional Belgian Wit bier. The Stuykman Wit is made from organic Danish wheat and barley, with coriander seed and orange peel added. The Stuykman Wit was our favorite and if we had more time, and room in our stomachs, we would have gone back for a full glass and a meal.

Skål!

You might wonder why we would come all the way to Denmark and then stop at a hot dog cart, but this was a truly Danish experience. There is an interesting history of the hot dog carts here. We found out The Danish Immigrant museum in Elk Horn, Iowa has acquired one of the old carts.

Making Mike's choice.

Mike's choice - Swedish style with sausage, mashed potatoes, beets, pickles, mustard, ketchup, and onions. No bun.

Roxanne's choice - beef sausage with 'French sauce' and mustard. The roll does not start with the sausage, but they do have a hole in the roll where they squirt in the mustard and French sauce before inserting the sausage.

She almost ate the whole thing.

Here is the candy shop we stopped at. They make a variety of favors of hard candy, including the candy in one of the beers we sampled earlier.

All of the candy is made there.

Here are the choices.

Our minds turned to rhubarb and ...

they had rhubarb flavored candy! We bought some to share, along with the Queens candy and a coffee flavored candy.

We headed back to the market we started at and sampled a strawberry.

The final stop was at the famous Summerbird chocolatier. We tried a sample that had a fluffy center, a crumb layer on the bottom, and was dipped in dark chocolate. Delicious!

Here is the store. You might notice the two people with white hats to the side. More about that in another post.

There are so many details and stories shared by Maria along the way that we might revisit that later. The tour was a tremendous experience and was certainly a highlight of our time in Copenhagen.

Full and satisfied, it was now time for more walking and sightseeing.