Kadeau - Copenhagen
The green house in the garden is a private dining room
Rating: 15/20
Where: Copenhagen, Denmark
When: Dinner for 2 on 4 July 2024
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 3500 DKK, Wine Pairing 2200 DKK
Accolades: 2 Michelin Stars, #54 on Top 50 Restaurants list (2024)
Why: A great sense of place, most ingredients hail from a single island
“Kadeau” is a restaurant located in Copenhagen, just south-east of downtown. Notably, it is the offshoot of another restaurant - also called Kadeau - on the Danish island of Bornholm, several hundred kilometers east of Copenhagen. That original Kadeau opened in 2007 with the goal of using only ingredients from the island. While there is indeed an abundance of produce during the summer months, in the winter the name of the game becomes pickled or otherwise preserved ingredients. Copenhagen's Kadeau follows the same template: most ingredients come from Bornholm, some from the rest of Denmark, and nothing at all from outside of Scandinavia. For example, anyone familiar with Noma will have seen the “we have no citrus fruit in Denmark, so we'll use crushed ants instead” approach to providing acidity to dishes. Luckily, Kadeau’s use of ants is very subtle, rather than being “in your face” about it.
Throughout the year, Kadeau serves two very distinct tasting menus. In May through October, the kitchen features current produce, whereas the rest of the year the focus is on preserved ingredients. We went in early July, which meant that our dinner incorporated only a handful of pickles.
Offered a wine pairing and a non-alcoholic pairing, we chose the former. The wines were interesting and paired well with the food, but wouldn’t have been my first choices to buy by the bottle. We were pleasantly surprised by the wine pairing starting with the very first bite served, so that ordering an aperitif was unnecessary in that sense. But on the other hand, it took about half an hour from us sitting down to actually receiving our first course, so an aperitif might be useful after all to bridge the wait...
The first course was a quartet of dehydrated tomatoes. Two of them were filled with different kinds of mint, and the other two contained pickled rhubarb, spruce and lemon thyme. The slightly sweet tomatoes were nice enough. The mint version started with a strong mint taste and ended with an aftertaste of tomato, whereas the other preparation was much sweeter with a nice rhubarb flavor. A pleasant, low-key way to begin our the meal, emphasizing the produce-driven nature of the menu 16.
A salad arrived next. It contained herbs and vegetables, celtuce, grapes, green strawberries, kombu and dill, and was dressed with a tomato broth and black currant wood oil. The tomato broth was lovely and full of flavor, which was good, since without it, the salad didn't taste of much. A interesting idea was that the serving vessel had been made entirely from dried kombu 16.
On top of a rye tartlet was Danish fresh cheese, some sardines arranged in a star pattern and a single pickled blueberry. Curiously, this dish had very light flavors. The fish tasted of very little, even the cheese was more flavorful. The tartlet had only a light crunch, and the dish overall seemed a bit oily, either due to the fatty fish or due to the oil that it had been brushed with. A pleasant course, but we were wondering why it didn't pack more of a flavor punch. Maybe the kitchen just wanted to start out slowly? 16
A 30-to-50-year-old mahogany clam from Norway was served raw and sliced. It came with cultured cream, quince vinegar, kohlrabi and hazelnuts. The clam had a light bite, and the dish was a bit creamy thanks to the cultured cream. Unfortunately, the flavors were (again) restrained 14.
A poached oyster came with marinated peas, an herb paste and blueberries. The oyster was very tender, the peas very flavorful (finally!), and the blueberries added some sweetness to the dish. Definitely a more taste-intensive dish than the preceding ones, but - notably - mostly due to the use of a preserved ingredient 17.
Five raw shrimp from the north of Norway were wrapped in different ingredients: tomatoes, strawberries, a rose leaf, a cherry leaf and figs. The shrimp were creamy, but their flavor was in most cases overpowered by the other ingredients. For example, the seafood taste paled compared to the sweet tomatoes. The rose leaf was more subtle - in fact, it barely tasted of rose -, and the shrimp came through more. The cherry leaf had a hint of bitterness, the figs were sweet, whereas the strawberries were less so, and had a texture similar to fruit leather. Altogether, this was a pleasant dish, but none of its components were particularly amazing 15.
Smoked salmon from Bornholm had seen a complex preparation: it had been cured in salt for two days, then cold smoked for eight hours and finally smoked again right before serving. The fish meat was scooped out at the table, resulting in a flaky texture, and was then topped by grilled shallots, a lavender butter and apple cider vinegar. Frankly, the rich salmon didn't really need the butter - the fish by itself was very good, with a creamy texture. The shallots were almost raw, and contributed a tiny bit of oniony sharpness, but mostly their texture to the dish. Very good 17.
Next, we were served a piece of the cured salmon's crust next to some pickles. The salmon was smoky, and - while nice enough - not quite as memorable as the previous serving. The pickles (unripe gooseberry, green tomato, canola top) were the real stars here - they were very good, especially the canola top which had an interesting flavor and a little punch from the pickling process 16.
Danish brown crab was served with elderflower oil, cauliflower and Japanese quince. This dish was oddly sweet for a supposedly savory course. And although the crab was fresh and of good quality, its taste was so delicate that it mostly disappeared among the other ingredients. Losing the flavor of its “main” ingredient made the dish a bit indistinctive 14.
Caviar was served with grilled white asparagus and three different kinds of seaweed. The caviar by itself was lovely, and went very nicely with the asparagus. Unfortunately, beyond that, the prized fish roe got a bit lost in the dish. The very crunchy texture of the seaweed was somewhat at odds with the other ingredients - this dish would have been more enjoyable without it 15.
A dish made with “just two ingredients” featured a slice of cured Danish squid on top of a Danish butter potato. (Well, technically there were a few more ingredients: a browned butter sauce and smoked sheep's whey.) Even though the squid had been scored, it was still quite chewy. The potatoes were fine, but nothing special. Overall, this dish felt almost too simple, which would have been fine if it didn't also lack flavor - more salt might have worked wonders here 13.
Danish lobster had been grilled and was served with rosehip buds, a sauce made from the lobster's head, rhubarb root oil and sheep's whey. This was by a large margin the best dish of the night. The lobster was tender with a perfect texture, and the sauce was lovely and bursting with flavor - it had just the right balance of butteriness and acidity. A strong 18, maybe even a 19 if one was a huge lobster fan.
The final savory dish of our dinner (and the only dish containing meat) was a terrine that looked like a millefeuille. It had many layers, including pears, celery, and pork chops. The terrine was topped with a sauce made from chicken stock, pickled mustard seeds, pine shoots and parsley. On the plus side, this dish definitely was flavorful, but on the downside, it was a very heavy, earthy dish that also seemed very oily 14.
Moving on to desserts: a milk ice cream, cherry compote and sunflower seed praline were wrapped inside a cherry leaf, creating an ice cream sandwich of sorts. The nutty, fruity, creamy, sweet filling was very nice, and the leaf was an interesting touch 16.
A “fruit leather” tarte was made from layers of rhubarb, beets, and plums. It came with toppings of black currants, blueberries and woodruff oil. A nice enough dish: chewy, a bit acidic, fruity and leathery 15.
The final dish of the night was a tarte that consisted almost entirely of walnuts. The tarte's flour was made from walnut shavings, it had a filling of walnut-honey and chopped walnuts and was finished with shaved walnuts on top. A Danish creme fraiche completed the dish. A very tasty and crumbly honey and walnut tarte 17.
Overall: This was a dinner where most ingredients came from a single Danish island, giving the meal a great sense of place. The service was excellent as well, and the food came in a large variety of unique preparations. However, disappointingly, there was a consistent lack of flavor among the dishes. It felt as if the kitchen was holding back, deliberately avoiding the use of more acidity or saltiness that could have given the food more oomph. Tellingly, the dishes with the strongest flavors used pickled ingredients, which are the focus of Kadeau's winter menu. After this experience, I suspect that that winter menu might have been more up my alley than its summer sibling 15.
