Mielcke & Hurtigkarl

Frederiksberg Runddel 1,

2000 Frederiksberg

Denmark

www.mhcph.com

Telephone: +45 38 34 84 36

Overall rating: 6-6.5/10

Date of visit: July 2015

This restaurant has been known for making very creative and “different” food. It’s not exactly molecular gastronomy, but the combinations are often unusual.

A tasting menu of seven courses + appetizers is currently prized at 1100 Kroner (€148). They also offer a five-course menu, which I believe is just a shorter version of the same menu (but I could be wrong). This is priced at €128. We asked to share a juice menu, but instead they offered us a small juice menu each. I see that they have now put this small juice option on the menu, priced at 450 kroner (€60.50).

The elegant dining room is quite unlike most other restaurants in Copenhagen and resembles a castle or a villa belonging to wealthy people:

I won’t go too much into detail with the food itself, as I’m writing this review much later, but I nevertheless remember my impressions quite well. I went here with a friend who’s not as keen as me on going to restaurants, but who nevertheless likes going occasionally and doesn’t mind paying. We agreed on both the overall experience of the meal as well as our favourite dishes.

We started on the terrace with an appetizer of leaves with creme fraiche, if I’m not mistaken:

My friend was served a garnished oyster, but I had asked for no oysters, so instead I had a piece of cabbage. A bit of a disappointing swap.

A small tartlet with cheese:

My first proper course, inside, was trout. I had asked for no sea urchin either, but apparently they didn’t get that, because they dusted the fish with sea urchin powder:

As my friend is not fond of fish, she was instead served peas in a cherry soup. More about this later.

Next course was one of the highlights: Lobster with tomatoes:

Next dishes was noodles (I think they were made of fish) with mushrooms:

Æbleskiver, an old Danish specialty, was up next. On top was fish flakes:

Another highlight was the chicken dish, although it might be difficult to discern the chicken underneath the decoration:

Up next were tiny potatoes with redcurrants:

Then a sauce made of whey from butter was poured on:

A small palate cleanser then appeared:

The main course was beef smeared with aubergine on top, which, oddly, tasted very fish. On top of this was Spanish almonds and under the beef was radicchio:

A sauce was then poured on:

The first dessert was strawberries and redcurrants:

The last course was pop corn and ice cream:

So, both of us came out of the restuarant asking the other: “So, did you like it?”, and we both responded with “Ehm, yeah… Kind of.”

“What was your favourite dish?”

“Hmm… Maybe… Ehm, maybe the lobster… Or… Yeah, maybe the potato dish”.

So, as you can tell, we weren’t swept away by the food here. As I’m used to from Copenhagen’s restaurant elite, everything was flawlessly executed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be incredibly tasty as well, nor does it mean that it’s well-composed. My last comment is mainly directed at the cherry soup with peas. We both felt this was an extremely odd combination. Jarring is the word I believe. The fish on top of the æbleskiver, as well as the fishy aubergine (however they achieved that) wasn’t particularly welcome either.

The service was good though and on level with most high-end restaurants in Copenhagen: Forthcoming, helpful and relaxed.

Overall, I would call the food creative and pleasant, but mostly on the light and harmless side. Granted, I think it must be incredibly difficult to keep coming up with new dishes, especially when you’re known for running an avantgarde kitchen, but we both missed “the wow factor”, as some people call it, as well as just some more memorable dishes, although the lobster, the potatoes and the chicken stood out a bit. I still prefer the somewhat less creative but more tasty Cofoco, where the appropiate four courses will cost you around 300 kroner – less than one third of the menu here (but also a lot fewer courses). Besides the somewhat unusual combinations here and there, there wasn’t anything wrong with the food at Mielcke & Hurtigkarl as such, but it seemed to us like it was a touch more important for the kitchen to experiment than to create tasty and memorable food. In an interview, one of the chefs said that in the past he would sometimes serve food that didn’t even taste nice – just so he could create something new. It seemed to me that he tried to relay that this was now purely a thing of the past, but I’m not so sure that this is really the case.