Höst

Höst

Nørre Farimagsgade 41
1364 Kbh.K
+45 89 93 84 09
hoest@cofoco.dk

http://cofoco.dk/da/restauranter/hoest/

Overall rating: 6/10

Date of visit: June 2014

 

Jump to Danish review – Gå til dansk anmeldelse

Höst is the newest restaurant in Cofoco’s restaurant empire. Cofoco’s other restaurants focuses mainly on French or Italian food, whereas Höst, as the name implies, is a Nordic themed restaurant.

The restaurant has been named the best decorated restaurant in the world by Travel Leisure.

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The menu doesn’t offer much choice: You can choose either a three course set menu for 295 kroner (€39.30), or go a la carte. A la carte has the courses from the menu (which are all the cheapest courses from the card) + two more starters (95 to 145 kroner), one more main course (195 to 215 kroner), and two more desserts (85 kroner each), and there’s also a cheese serving available (75 kroner). Water is 50 kroner per person, whether still or sparking. The restaurant also offers a wine pairing at 195 kroner, and an upgraded wine pairing for 295 kroner. They also offer “the full package” with the set menu + sparkling wine, wine pairing, coffee and water for 575 kroner, or  675 kroner with the upgraded wine pairing.

We were six people this evening, and two of us went for the set menu, whereas the rest went a la carte.

Before the menu began we were given an appetiser: Small breads with a filling, a crème fraiche dressing, rye bread crackers, and salmon with cucumber. Quite nice.

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My starter was lobster with sea buckthorn, juniper cream, roasted hazelnuts, browned butter (mixed into mayonnaise if I’m not mistaken), a sea buckthorn vinaigrette, and carrots as well as a fennel sprig on top. Although this lobster didn’t match the best I’ve had, neither in texture nor flavour, it was definitely one of the better ones, and the combinations worked really well here, although I believe it was the vinaigrette that was a tad bitter (8/10).

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Two others had lamb tongue with lamb sweetbreads, pickled mushrooms, mushroom sauce and toast. I can’t score this as I only had a small taste, but it seemed to be around the same level as the lobster dish. Very nice.

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The starter for the set menu said salad but looked more like a soup. It contained green asparagus, pickled black chanterelles, scallops and sunflower seeds. I didn’t taste this one.

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After this we had an extra small dish, which was veal tartar with enoki mushrooms, cress and some crunchy bread. I was the only one who finished this one, although I’m not a great fan of tartar. This aside, the meat itself didn’t have much flavour.

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For the main course I had rib eye with mustard mayonnaise, fried baby gem lettuce, North-sea cheese and wild watercress. I’m not a great fan of rib eye. When I cooked it myself it was very similar to this, which was: One half of the cut was very tender, bordering on blubbery, while the other half was somewhat chewy. The rest of the ingredients were okay, but nothing spectacular. In the end it became a bit of a struggle to get through this dish (5/10).

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For the set menu, the main course was braised beef topblade with summer cabbage, radishes, ramson and a sauce from smoked cheese.

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We also had an extra pre-dessert, which was a fluffy cream of a dairy product (skyr or maybe crème fraiche) with a rhubarb jelly at the bottom and a bit of liquorice powder on top. The rhubarb was difficult to detect, and there simply wasn’t enough of it, but otherwise a pleasant intermission.

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My dessert was birch bark ice cream, chestnut and vanilla caramel, herb chocolate, hazelnut sponge cake and stems of a Danish herb that I have forgotten (it tasted a lot like liquorice). Even when eating it alone, the ice cream barely had any flavour. When combining it with the rest, it was simply something cold and creamy in my mouth. This was in no way a bad dish, but simply nothing extravagant (5-6/10).

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My then-wife had organic juncket icecream with beer and rye bread porridge (the beer and rye bread porridge is called øllebrød in Danish), white chocolate, caramel and coffee. She didn’t like this at all. I had a small taste. I might have liked it a bit more than her, but I didn’t like it either. I can’t score it based on this, but it would probably be 3 or 4. However, this is definitely based on taste, as the dessert was just like it was supposed to be. Nevertheless, it simply wasn’t pleasant, although I believe it’s a dish the restaurant is quite proud of. More about this later.

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I forgot to take a picture of the dessert for the set menu, but it was Danish strawberries marinated in honey syp, vanilla ice cream and cold buttermilk soup with chamomile. I had a small taste as well. The strawberries were very good, but the soup was not pleasant to eat at all because of the chamomile.

We were all very full when we left.

Service was very friendly and just as forthcoming as in Cofoco, so we were very happy with that. However, the pace of the meal was not very good, although I have seen worse in a similar restaurant. I can see from the date stamp on my pictures that it went like this: The starter was served 15 minutes after the appetiser (perfect). The tartar was served 20-25 minutes after the starter. The main course was served 35 minutes after the tartar. The pre-dessert was served half an hour after the main course. The dessert was served 13 minutes after the pre-dessert (perfect). So, we arrived around 8.45 pm. and left 11.30. Although it’s far from a catastrophe, it’s simply too much waiting.

If you look at the amount of food you get, I would call this very good value for money. But then, we simply didn’t like the food so much, except for the starters. We all agreed about this. So, then I suppose it’s not such great value after all. We might simply have been unlucky to have menu we didn’t like so much.

In many ways, Höst was neither better nor worse than many of the other restaurants in Copenhagen that serve New Nordic Food, including the ones with Michelin stars. So why isn’t my score higher? One was the problem with some of the ingredients or combinations, another is taste. And as I insist on writing purely subjective reviews the score is 6/10.

For people who think New Nordic Food is the best thing since sliced bread, Höst will be a welcome addition to the string of restaurants that has garnered accolades all over Scandinavia.

It’s understandable that chefs want to create something new and different, but my problem with the New Nordic Food movement is that it sometimes doesn’t taste nice. If strawberry or vanilla taste better than celeriac or beetroot in an ice cream, why insist on using celeriac or beetroot just because it’s Nordic? Celeriac is something I have learnt to enjoy, but I still have some issues with the sudden glorification of celery/celeriac, beetroots, parsnips, carrots, cabbage, radishes, and so on. 15 years ago hardly anybody in Denmark truly enjoyed those vegetables, and especially children hated them. Danes went on holiday in Spain, France and Italy to get away from our dreadful meals (and weather) and to have some “proper” well-tasting food (and sunshine). Although I’ve had, and cooked, great dishes with those ingredients, I like to think that this current fascination has more to do with a fashion than anything else. Noma has been voted the best restaurant in the world four times, and Scandinavian design and clothing is super trendy in both Scandinavia and New York. Everything old is all of a sudden cool – be it stereo systems, clothes, cars, furniture, mobile phones or video games. So, because the right people say we have to enjoy celeriac and parsnips en masse, everybody all of a sudden loves it. What’s wrong with eating ripe strawberries for dessert and boiled prawns and dill for starters? Does it have to be unripe strawberries for starters, and raw prawns and dill for dessert?

This is not to say that New Nordic Food is the emperor’s new clothes, but simply that often it goes from creativity to dogmatic overkill. What I mean is that it’s great to revamp ingredients that we had forgot, if they still taste nice, but the focus should always be to make well-tasting food, not to only use Nordic ingredients. It seems that several restaurants prefer to serve food only made from celeriac, parsnips, carrots, beetroots, etc., because that’s Nordic, and we have grown it for a thousand years, although it simply doesn’t taste very nice. This was partly the problem with Höst as well, which means that partly the fault was not Höst but the style of the food, although, of course, they were still the ones making the choice of what to serve. I like to think (or at least hope) that much of what is going on with the New Nordic Food movement at the moment will be forgotten in a couple of years, while all the wonderful creations that have been made in that movement with onions, Jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb, etc. will be cherished for generations to come, while we can again enjoy ripe strawberries instead of beetroots for dessert.

Of course, this has less to do with Höst than my personal taste, but Höst might have been the restaurant where I felt that now I have finally had enough. Their revival of øllebrød for instance made another food critic shout with joy. We just felt baffled, wondering why a dish that nobody has liked for the last hundred years (threatening to serve this was basically used as torture in Denmark) all of a sudden is supposed to enchant us. Did it taste nice? No. Sure, it was better than the traditional øllebrød, but still it wasn’t something I would like to eat again. Neither would my wife at the time who was even less impressed by that dish than I was. But hey – it’s New Nordic Cooking so I’ll grow an enormous beard, put on my grandpa glasses (of course with plain glass, as my vision is fine), faded green chinos, and a truck driver cap and say it’s amazing, ’cause that’s what everybody does. Right? I mean, it is after all the best decorated restaurant in the world. It’s grimy! Yeah!

Dansk anmeldelse

Höst er den nyeste restaurant i Cofocos restaurantimperium. Cofocos andre restauranter fokuserer hovedsagligt på fransk eller italiensk mad, mens Höst er nordisk mad, som man kan se af navnet.

Restauranten er blevet kåret som den bedst indrettede restaurant i verden af Travel Leisure.

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Der er ikke meget valg på menuen: Man kan enten vælge en fastlagt treretters menu til 295 kroner eller vælge a la carte. A la carte indeholder også retterne fra menuen (som er de billigste retter på kortet) samt yderligere to forretter (95 til 145 kr.), en hovedret (195 til 215 kr.) og to desserter (85 kr. per styk), og man kan også vælge en osteservering (75 kr.). Vand ad libitum koster 50 kr. per person, uanset om det er med brus eller uden. Restauranten tilbyder også en vinmenu til yderligere 195 kroner og en bedre vinmenu til 295 kroner. De tilbyder også “En aften på Höst” med den fastlagte menu, bobler, vinmenu, kaffe og vand til 575 kroner eller 675 kroner med den bedre vinmenu.

Vi var seks personer den aften, hvoraf to valgte menuen, mens resten gik a la carte.

Inden menuen begyndte fik vi en lille appetitvækker: Små brød med fyld, en cremefraichedressing, sprøde rugbrødsstænger og laks med agurk. Ganske lækkert.

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Min forret var hummer med havtorn, enebærcreme, ristede hasselnødder, brunet smør (blandet med mayonnaise, hvis jeg ikke tager fejl), en havtornsvinaigrette, gulerødder og en fennikeldusk på toppen. Selvom hummeren ikke var blandt de allerbedste, jeg har fået, hverken mht. konsistens eller smag, var den klart blandt de bedre, og kombinationen fungerede rigtig godt, selvom vinaigretten var en smule bitter (8/10).

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To andre fik lammetunge med lammebrisler, syltede svampe, svampesauce og ristet brød. Jeg kan ikke give en karakter baseret på kun den lille smagsprøve, men det var nok nogenlunde det samme som hummeren.

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Forretten til den fastlagte menu var beskrevet som salat, men det lignede mere en suppe. Den indeholdt grønne asparges, syltede sorte kantareller, kammuslinger og solsikkekerner. Jeg smagte ikke den ret.

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Bagefter fik vi en ekstra lille ret, som var kalvetatar med enokisvampe, karse og sprødt brød. Jeg var den eneste, der spiste op, selvom jeg ikke er meget for tatar. Under alle omstændigheder havde kødet ikke særlig meget smag.

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Til hovedret fik jeg ribeye med sennepsmayonnaise, steg hjertesalat, Vesterhavsost og vild brøndkarse. Jeg er ikke så vild med ribeye. Da jeg selv lavede det, mindede det meget om det her: Det ene af de to kødstykker var meget mørt, på grænsen til at være blævret, mens det andet var lidt sejt. Resten af ingredienserne var okay, men ikke spektakulære. Til sidst var den her ret lidt svær at få kæmpet sig igennem (5/10).

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Til den fastlagte menu var hovedretten braiseret oksebov med sommerkål, radiser, ramsløg og en sauce af rygeost.

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Vi fik også en ekstra prædessert, som var en luftigt creme af et mælkeprodukt (nok skyr eller cremefraiche) med rabarbergele i bunden og lidt lakridspulver på toppen. Rabarberen var svær at smage, og der var ganske enkelt ikke nok af den, men ellers var det en behagelig forfriskning.

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Min dessert var birkebarkis, kastanje- og vaniljekaramel, urtechokolade, hasselnødesandkage og nogle kviste af en krydderurt, som jeg ikke kan huske navnet på (det smagte meget som lakrids). Selv når jeg spiste den alene, smagte isen knap af noget. Når man blandede den med resten, var det ganske enkelt noget koldt og cremet i munden. Det var på ingen måde en dårlig ret, men ganske enkelt intet ekstravagant (5-6/10).

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Min hustru fik økologisk ymeris med øllebrød, hvid chokolade, karamel og kaffe. Hun brød sig slet ikke om den dessert. Jeg fik en lille smagsprøve. Jeg kunne måske lidt bedre lide det end hende, men jeg brød mig heller ikke om det. Jeg kan ikke give en ordentlig karakter ud fra den smagsprøve, men det ville nok være 3 eller 4. Jeg skal dog skynde mig at sige, at den karakter helt er baseret på smag, da desserten lod til at være, helt som restauranten havde tilsigtet. Vi brød også ganske enkelt slet ikke om den, selvom det vist er en ret, restauranten er ret stolt af. Mere om det senere.

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Jeg glemte at tage et billede af desserten fra den fastlagte menu, men det var danske jordbær marineret i honningsyp, vaniljeis og koldskål med kamille. Jeg fik også en lille smagsprøve. Jordbærrene var rigtig gode, men koldskålen var ikke nogen fornøjelse, da kamillen ikke passede særlig godt ind.

Vi var alle meget mætte, da vi gik.

Betjeningen var venlig og lige så imødekommende som på Cofoco, så den var vi meget tilfreds med. Men tempoet i måltidet var ikke særlig godt, selvom jeg dog har set det værre i lignende restauranter. Jeg kan se, ud fra hvornår billederne er taget, at retterne blev serveret på følgende måde: Forretten blev serveret et kvarter efter appetitvækkeren (perfekt). Tataren blev serveret 20-25 minutter efter forretten. Hovedretten blev serveret 35 minutter efter tataren. Prædesserten blev serveret en halv time efter hovedretten. Desserten blev serveret 13 minutter efter prædesserten (perfekt). Så vi ankom kl. 20.45 og gik igen kl. 23.30. Selvom det langt fra er katastrofalt, var det simpelthen for lang ventetid. Der var ret mange pladser i restauranten og åbenbart ikke nok folk i køkkenet.

Hvis man ser på, hvor meget mad man får for, får man meget for pengene på Höst. Men vi var alligevel ikke så vilde med maden på nær forretterne. Det var vi alle enige om. Så man får måske ikke så meget for pengene alligevel. Vi var måske ganske enkelt uheldige at få en menu, vi ikke var så vilde med.

På mange måder var Höst hverken bedre eller værre end mange af de andre restauranter i København, der serverer ny nordisk mad, inklusive dem med Michelinstjerner. Hvorfor er min karakter så ikke højere? En af grundene er problemet med nogle af ingredienserne eller kombinationerne – en anden er smag. Og da jeg insisterer på at skrive udelukkende subjektive anmeldelser, blev karakteren 6/10.

Hvis man synes, at ny nordisk madlavning er Jesu genkomst, vil Höst være hjerteligt velkommen til den lange række af restauranter, der har høstet roser Skandinavien rundt.

Det er forståeligt, at kokke gerne vil skabe noget nyt og anderledes, men grunden til, at jeg ikke er ubetinget tilhænger af den nye nordiske madlavning er, at maden ganske enkelt ikke altid smager godt. Hvis jordbær eller vanilje smager bedre end knoldselleri eller rødbeder i en is, hvor skal man så insistere på at bruge selleri eller rødbeder, bare fordi det er nordiske grøntsager? Selleri er noget, jeg har lært at holde af med tiden, men jeg har det stadig lidt svært med den pludselige forherligelse af selleri, rødbeder, persillerødder, gulerødder, kål, radiser og så videre. For 15 år siden var der knap en eneste person i hele Danmark, som virkelig nød at spise de grøntsager, og især børn hadede dem. Vi tog på ferie i Sydeuropa for at slippe væk fra vores dødssyge mad (og vejr) og få at få noget “ordentligt” velsmagende mad (og solskin). Selvom jeg har fået, og selv har lavet, dejlige retter med de ingredienser, tror jeg dog, at den nuværende fascination handlere mere om en modetendens end noget andet. Noma er blevet stemt ind som den bedste restaurant i verden fire gange,  og skandinavisk design og tøj er supertrendy i både Skandinavien og New York. Alt gammelt er lige pludselig fedt igen – uanset om det er stereoanlæg, tøj, biler, møbler, mobiltelefoner eller videospil. Så fordi de rigtige mennesker siger, at vi nu skal nyde at spise selleri og persillerødder i massevis, er alle lige pludselige vilde med det. Hvad er der nu i vejen med at spise modne jordbær til dessert og kogte rejer og dild til forret? Skal det absolut være grønne (umodne) jordbær til forret, og rå rejer og dild til dessert?

Dermed ikke sagt, at ny nordisk madlavning er kejserens nye klæder, men det går desværre oftest fra kreativitet til dogmatisk overkill. Med andre ord: Det er en pragtfuld ide at genoplive ingredienser, som vi ellers havde glemt, hvis det stadig smager godt, men fokus burde altid være at lave mad, der smager godt, og ikke kun at bruge nordiske ingredienser. Det lader til, at flere restauranter foretrækker at servere mad udelukkende lavet af selleri, persillerødder, gulerødder, rødbeder osv., fordi det er nordisk, og vi har jo dyrket det i tusind år, selvom det ganske enkelt ikke smager særlig godt. Det var til dels også problemet med Höst, hvilket betyder, at det til dels ikke var Hösts fejl, men ganske enkelt madlavningsstilen, som de bekender sig til, selvom de selvfølgelig helt var herre over, hvad de serverer. Jeg tror (eller i det mindste håber), at meget af det, der foregår inden for ny nordisk madlavning for tiden, vil være glemt igen om en række år, mens alle de pragtfulde retter, som bevægelsen har stået for, med løg, jordskokker, rabarber osv. vil blive leveret ned gennem mange generationer, mens vi så igen får lov til at spise modne jordbær i stedet for rødbeder til dessert.

Det har selvfølgelig mere at gøre med min personlige smag end Höst, men Höst var nok restauranten, hvor jeg følte, at nu havde jeg endelig fået nok. F.eks. fik deres nyfortolkning af øllebrød en anden anmelder til at klappe i hænderne. Vi undrede os blot over, hvorfor en ret, som absolut ingen har kunnet lide i de sidste hundrede år pludselig skulle kunne henrykke os. Man har jo næsten brugt øllebrød som en torturform. Smagte det godt? Næ. Ja, det var da bedre end den traditionelle opskrift, men det var stadig ikke noget, jeg velvilligt ville have lyst til at smage igen. Det ville min hustru heller ikke, som var endnu mindre imponeret af retten, end jeg var. Men hey – det er ny nordisk madlavning, så jeg anlægger et enormt fuldskæg, tager bedstefarbriller på (selvfølgelig udstyret med vinduesglas, da mit syn ikke fejler noget), falmede grønne chinos og en truckerkasket og siger, at det er pragtfuldt, for det gør alle andre jo. Ikke også? Det er jo trods alt den flottest indrettede restaurant i verden. Det er råt! Yeah!

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