Kadeau
Wildersgade 10
1408 København K
Telephone: +45 33 25 22 23
kbh@kadeau.dk
Overall rating: 6/10
Date of visit: March 2014
Jump to Danish review – Gå til dansk anmeldelse
Kadeau received a star in the Michelin guide in 2013 and has kept it since.
They fall neatly into the Copenhagen trend of New Nordic Cooking.
They offer a long menu, priced at 900 Kroner (€121), which has since gone up to 950 kroner (128), while a shorter version of the same menu is also available, now priced at 625 kroner (€84). There is no a la carte, like most other top restaurants in Copenhagen.
I don’t remember the exact prices for wine, but I do believe my friend’s glass of red wine set him back 180 or 200 kroner (€24-27), which shocked him a bit as he’s Spanish, and even in three star restaurants in Spain, a glass of red wine is usually €9.
Two of us chose the long menu, while one chose the short one, which was not a problem for the restaurant. Although the courses for the short was already determined, we were allowed to change one or two dishes (we changed one).
I’m unfortunately writing this review four months after the meal, so I might be mistaken about some of the ingredients.
Before the actual menu began, we had a flurry of appetisers (both the long and the short menu had the same):
First small thin rolls of Jerusalem artichokes with chantarelles and sea urchin emulsion.
Then crispy Jerusalem artichoke peel with lumpfish roe.
Dehydrated beetroots were served with yellow beets and yeast, which was not a particularly tasty. On the side was a better emulsion of broccoli and garlic. I’ve never seen the use for dehydrating vegetables or shellfish, and combining the now dry and chewy beetroots with yeast was not a combination any of us enjoyed.
The next, a warm soup, was matured beef and lemon verbena. Tasty, but nevertheless with just a touch of unpleasant “darkness” from the cured meat, although the lemon verbena added a lovely refreshing, and needed, touch.
The menu lists the next appetiser as crispy sour dough and lichen, but honestly I don’t remember these very well.
Next was gravad duck with a powder of beach roses and black currants. Although the taste of black currant, but not so much the texture, was nice, we all found this appetiser a bit odd.
Better was a crisp of duck with mushroom pickles.
Duck heart was served with chives flowers and hay, along with dipping of cress. Hearts is probably something you like or don’t like – there’s not so much in-between. None of us really liked it, although we didn’t hate it in any way.
So, although there were a few dips in the appetisers (which could be expected), I nevertheless thought to myself that if they kept this up with the actual menu, it could be as good as Noma. The ones we didn’t enjoy, we at least admired for sheer creativity.
At this point we choose whether we wanted the short or the long menu, and then the food started appearing shortly after.
First was squid served with apples and a lovely sauce from gooseberry wine and some small shallots on top. The sauce was very memorable, but the rest of the dish wasn’t. The squid was a bit chewy and tasteless and the apples disappeared in this mix. We both agreed that they could have told us it was anything and we would have believed them.
The second dish was whiting served with various kinds of cabbage and herbs and, if I’m not mistaken, a sauce made from raw rhubarb. Again, this was decent and fairly pleasant but it was basically something you ate and then forgot.
The next dish was for all of us one of the highlights: Turbot. You can never go wrong with that, can you? The fish was wonderfully cooked and super juicy. It was served with mussels, although I had asked to have those removed (I had nothing instead). The fish was covered in thin slices of celeriac, and I believe it was dusted with hemp. A sauce made from mushrooms and whey, if I’m not mistaken, was poured on. As I said, the fish was lovely, but I nevertheless felt that celeriac and mushrooms is something I’ve had a million times before, and here it wasn’t made any more interesting than when I’ve cooked it myself or had it another place. So, in the end, a very lovely piece of fish with not much else.
Next up was a dish of spring onions, mostly charred on the barbecue, and topped with melted cheese. On top was poured a sauce made from “last summer’s red berries”. How poetic it sounds. Makes me want to write a review about it. This sauce, again, was very lovely. But the onions, again, just felt like onions. And some of them had not been cooked enough for my liking, so they tore up my throat.
Next dish was a burnt carrot with stuffed with slowly cooked pork and with a dipping of spruce and sheep’s milk. The meat was nice, flavourful and very tender, but neither of us liked the carrot. We both looked at each other and said: “It’s just burnt!”.
The main course was beef sirloin with some root vegetables (I forget which) and black garlic served with a braising sauce. Although it doesn’t look like it on the picture because of the flash, I would say the meat was cooked rare to very rare. I ate mine, while the two others sent theirs back to have it cooked more. Maybe I should have done that too. At least it was cooked so little that it was a bit difficult to chew, and as you can see from the picture, there was some fat that should have been removed. Expect for the lack of cooking, there wasn’t much to criticise about this dish, but not much to enchant either.
The cheese serving was better though. In general, I don’t choose cheese a la carte if there’s a dessert alternative – and especially not in posh restaurants, where the cheese is usually way to powerful for my taste. I have to say though, that this cheese serving is one of the best I’ve ever had, although there’s not much competition. It was pear, blue cheese and fermented honey. It was a bit too frozen though, but nevertheless a winning combination. And unlike at Pierre Gagnaire, the cheese didn’t overpower the pear. So, this was one of the few cheese servings I’ve had that I truly enjoyed.
Dessert was one of the highlights too. A milk curd/cream, what I believe was crispy, frozen salsify, frozen granulated white chocolate, and two creams of black currant. Also a winning combination, and a dish that was quite a pleasure to eat.
So, a bumpy ride, although it never went from terrible to extraordinary. The deflections were rather slightly better or worse from the rest. If I divide the meal into appetisers and menu, then all of us enjoyed the appetisers the most. The appetisers are often something that will still be served even though the menu changes, which I assume is also the case at Kadeau, and therefore they can perfect those over a longer period. Compared to the appetisers, the menu simply seemed a tad plain (like the beef main course), or simply experiments that didn’t work (like the carrot), although the cheese and dessert deserves its due praise.
Although I’m Danish I’m not so hung up on this New Nordic Cooking. One of the reasons is that many of these restaurants seem to think that if they just serve a Nordic vegetable, like celeriac, cabbage, onion, or swede on a plate, then it will work wonders on its own with the kitchen barely having to do anything. To me it’s just a vegetable that none of us ever really cared about on a plate. If it had been a superb truffle, lovely asparagus, morels, or something else exquisite, then yes, you could just have lightly cooked it and served it on a plate and we would be wowed. Boling a piece of onion or celeriac just doesn’t create the same effect. The reason why the onion dish at Noma was miles and miles beyond the one at Kadeau was also the lovely sauce, but most importantly that the main ingredient, the onions, were still crisp while at the same time very sweet and had none of the sharpness from raw onions. It was almost the opposite at Kadeau.
All of us agreed that this meal wasn’t that special, but despite this I would nevertheless say that you somewhat do get your money’s worth here, as it was a lot of food and a lot of creativity for around the average price of a Michelin starred restaurant in Copenhagen. Still, there are other restaurants that serve better tasting food, maybe less creative, for the same money or less (Cofoco comes to mind, priced at 300 kroner (€40) for four courses).
Kadeau was named best gourmet restaurant in town by the users of the website AOK.dk, so it is perfectly possible that we simply had one of the their weakest menus.
The service was also good, but not particularly personal. Although the waiters did absolutely nothing wrong, I simply didn’t feel as welcome here as I have done in other more plain restaurants in Copenhagen. Maybe it was simply because they just explained what was on the plate and then walked away and never made any form of conversation. This is a minor detail though. So, the service was still very good.
Dansk anmeldelse
Kadeau fik en stjerne I Michelinguiden i 2013 og har behold den siden da.
Restauranten er et godt eksempel på den nuværende tendens med ny nordisk madlavning.
De tilbyder en menu på otte retter til 900 kroner, hvilket sidenhen er steget til 950 kroner. En kortere udgave med fire retter af samme menu koster nu 625 kroner. Ligesom de fleste andre af Københavns fineste restauranter er der ingen a la carte menu.
Jeg kan ikke huske den præcise pris på vin per glas, men jeg mener, at min kammerat gav 180 eller 200 kroner for et glas rødvin, hvilket chokerede ham lidt, da han er Spanier, og på selv de trestjernede restauranter i Spanien koster et glas rødvin for det meste €9 (67 kroner).
To af os valgte den lange menu, mens en valgte den korte, hvilket ikke var noget problem for restauranten (i modsætning til visse andre restauranter). Selvom retterne i den korte menu allerede var fastlagt, måtte vi gerne skifte en enkelt eller to ud (vi skiftede en ud).
Da jeg skriver anmeldelsen fire måneder efter besøget her, kan jeg have husket fejl om visse af ingredienserne.
Før selve menuen fik vi en lang række appetitvækkere (det samme for både den lange og den korte menu):
Først tynde ruller af jordskokker med kantareller og emulsion af søpindsvin.
Derefter sprøde jordskokkeskaller med stenbiderrogn.
Dehydrerede rødbeder kom med gule beder og gær, og det smagte ikke videre godt. Ved siden af blev der serveret en mere velsmagende emulsion af broccoli og hvidløg. Jeg har aldrig helt kunnet se idéen i at dehydrere grøntsager eller skaldyr, og kombinationen af de nu tørre og seje rødbeder med gær var ikke noget, der vakte glæde i nogen af os.
Næste snack var en varm suppe med modnet oksekød og jernurt (citronverbena). Det smagte godt, men alligevel med en mindre behagelig snert af noget mindre behageligt “mørkt” fra kødet, selvom jernurten dog tilføjede et dejligt forfriskende, og tiltrængt, touch.
Ifølge menuen var det næste surdej med kærlighedsfrugt, men jeg kan ærlig talt ikke huske dem særlig godt.
Derefter fik vi gravad and med et pulver af strandroser og solbær. Selvom smagen af solbær, ikke så megen konsistensen, var behagelig, syntes vi alle sammen, at denne ret var lidt for underlig.
Vi kunne bedre lide det næste, som var chips af and med syltede svampe.
Andehjerter kom med purløgsblomster og hø sammen med en dip af karse. Hjerter er nok noget man enten kan lide eller ikke kan lide – det falder sjældent midt imellem. Ingen af os brød sig rigtig om det, selvom vi dog ikke på ingen måde afskyede det.
Så selvom der var et par mindre heldige snacks (hvilket kun kan forventes), tænkte jeg alligevel, at hvis de holdt niveauet i selve menuen, kunne måltidet blive så godt som på Noma. De snacks, vi ikke brød os så meget om, beundrede vi i det mindste for deres kreativitet.
Herefter valgte vi, om vi ville have den lange eller korte menu, og maden kom derefter hurtigt på bordet.
Først ret var blæksprutte med æbler og en pragtfuld sauce fra stikkelsbærvin og nogle små skalotteløg på toppen. Saucen var mindeværdig, men resten af retten var desværre ikke. Blæksprutten var noget sej, og smagen af æblerne forsvandt helt i sammensætningen. Vi var enige om, at uanset hvad de havde sagt, var på tallerkenen, ville vi have troet dem.
Næste ret var hvilling med forskellige slags kål og krydderurter og vistnok en sauce på rå rabarber. Det smagte igen behageligt, men var i realiteten noget, man spiste og så glemte igen.
Næste ret var et af højdepunkterne i måltidet for os alle: Pighvar. Det går man aldrig galt i byen med, vel? Fisken var fornemt tilberedt og utrolig saftig. Den blev serveret med muslinger, selvom jeg havde frabedt mig dem (og fik intet i stedet). Fisken var dækket med tynde skiver knoldselleri, og vist jeg ikke tager fejl, var der drysset hamp på toppen. En sauce på svampe og valle, hvis jeg ikke tager fejl, blev hældt på. Som sagt var fisken pragtfuld, men det føltes alligevel, som om knoldselleri og svampe er noget, jeg har fået tonsvis af gange før, og var det ikke gjort mere spændende, end når jeg selv laver det, eller når jeg har fået det på en anden restaurant. Så i sidste ende var det et pragtfuldt stykke fisk uden så meget andet.
Næste ret bestod af forårsløg hovedsagligt grillet og så gratineret med ost. Her blev en sauce af “sidste sommers røde bær” hældt på. Og hvor lyder det poetisk. Jeg får næsten lyst til at skrive en anmeldelse om det. Saucen var igen pragtfuld. Men igen var løgene bare løg. Nogle af dem var ganske enkelt heller ikke tilberedt nok, så de rev godt i halsen.
En brændt gulerod var blevet fyldt med langtidstilberedt svinekød og blev serveret med en dip på grannåle og fåremælk. Kødet var meget smagsfuldt og mørt, men ingen af os brød os om selve guleroden. Vi kiggede bare på hinanden og udbrød: “Men den er jo bare forkullet!”
Hovedretten var oksehøjreb med rodfrugter og sorte hvidløg med en braiseringssauce. Selvom det ikke helt fremgår af billedet pga. blitzen, vil jeg sige, at kødet var stegt fra rødt til meget rødt. Jeg spiste mit, mens de to andre sendte deres tilbage og fik det stegt længere. Det burde jeg måske også have gjort. Det var i hvert fald tilberedt så lidt, at det var svært at tygge, og som man kan se på billedet, var der en fedtkant, der burde have været fjernet. Ud over den korte tilberedningstid var der ikke meget at kritisere ved retten, men der var heller ikke meget, der henrykkede.
Osteserveringen var dog bedre. Generelt vælger jeg aldrig ost fra menuen, hvis jeg i stedet kan vælge dessert – og især ikke på fine restauranter, hvor osten oftest er alt for kraftig til min smag. Men den her osteservering er klart en af de bedste, jeg har fået, selvom der ikke meget konkurrence. Retten bestod af pære, blåskimmelost og gæret honning. Den var lidt for frossen, men trods det var det en vellykket kombination. Og i modsætning til hos Pierre Gagnaire, overdøvede osten ikke pæren. Så det er en af de eneste osteserveringer, jeg har fået, som jeg virkelig har nydt.
Desserten var også en af måltidets højdepunkter: En curd/mælkecreme, frossent og sprødt havrerod, frossen og granuleret hvid chokolade, og to forskellige cremer af solbær. Igen en god kombination, og en ret, der var en stor fornøjelse at spise.
Så oplevelsen havde sine op- og nedture, selvom det aldrig gik fra frygtelig til himmelsk. Afvigelserne var mere lidt bedre eller lidt værre end resten. Hvis vi deler måltidet op i snacks og menuen, foretrak vi alle sammen snackene. Snacks er oftest noget, der består, selvom menuen skifter, hvilket nok også er tilfældet på Kadeau, og derfor kan de finpudse dem over længere tid. I forhold til snackene virkede selve menuen ganske enkelt lidt for almindelig (f.eks. højreben), eller så var det eksperimenter, der ikke fungerede (f.eks. guleroden), selvom osten og desserten absolut skal roses.
Selvom jeg er dansker, er jeg ikke så vild med ny nordisk madlavning. En af grundene er, at mange af restauranterne tror, at de bare kan servere en nordisk grøntsag, f.eks. knoldselleri, kål, løg eller kålråbi, på en tallerken, og så opstår der ganske enkelt magi, uden at folkene i køkkenet behøver at gøre noget særligt. For mig at se er det bare en grøntsag, som ingen af os nogensinde rigtig har brudt sig om, på en tallerken. Hvis det havde været nogle pragtfulde trøfler, dejlige asparges, morkler eller noget andet udsøgt, så ja, så kunne man godt bare have tilberedt dem ganske let og lagt dem på en tallerken, og vi ville klappe i hænderne. Koger man et løg eller knoldselleri opnår man bare ikke samme effekt. Grunden til, at retten med løg på Noma var langt, langt bedre end den på Kadeau, var også pga. den pragtfulde sauce, men først og fremmest fordi hovedingrediensen, løgene, stadig var sprøde, men på samme tid meget søde, og de havde ikke snerten af skarphed fra rå løg. Det var næsten det modsatte på Kadeau.
Vi var alle enige om, om måltidet ikke var det helt store, men man får alligevel noget for pengene i form af meget mad og en masse kreativitet til nogenlunde samme pris som i de andre Michelinrestauranter i København. Der findes dog stadig restauranter, der serverer mad, der måske er mindre kreativt, men ganske enkelt smager bedre, til samme pris eller mindre (f.eks. Cofoco, som koster 300 kroner for fire retter).
Kadeau blev kåret som bedste gourmetrestaurant af brugerne på hjemmesiden AOK.dk, så det er muligt, at vi ganske enkelt fik en af deres svageste menuer.
Betjeningen var også god, men ikke videre personlig. Selvom tjenerne ikke gjorde noget som helst galt, følte jeg mig ganske enkelt ikke helt så velkommen som på visse andre mere “almindelige” restauranter i København. Det skyldtes måske, at de ganske enkelt forklarede, hvad der var på tallerkenen og så gik igen, og aldrig prøvede at hyggesnakke. Det er dog en mindre detalje, og betjenten var stadig rigtig god.
