Something is Fermenting in the State of Denmark

It’s never good news when Denmark is in the news.

Remember 2005? When that Danish newspaper published blasphemous-to-Islam cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and protests erupted all over the world? It was not great.

What about a decade later, in 2016 and the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis, when the Danish government enacted a (pretty cruel sounding, to me, at least) law that called for the seizure from asylum-seekers of valuable assets worth more than $1,500? Also, not a good look.

Here we are, in early 2025, and Denmark is again making headlines. To the Scandinavian country’s credit, the headlines are not of their making, but instead of a power (and apparently territory)-hungry megalomaniac I have the distinct DISpleasure of calling my President. In case you’ve been living under a rock or just hiding under the covers trying to keep your sanity intact, the nut job-in-chief wants the US to take control of Greenland, the world’s largest island that just so happens to be both a Danish territory and a geographical part of North America.

I really can’t get into it all. I’m shaking my head as I write this. I will say this— I thought I was going to start this piece talking about a guy I used to…ahem..see in my mid-20s and who lived a couple of spells in Copenhagen. For reasons I can no longer remember, I was dying to go to Copenhagen back then and Andy had lived there; so it must have been kismet that brought us around toward each other and not some shared tendencies toward self-hatred and -destruction. Right? But now I don’t have to write more about him and those hazy nights in the mid-aughts because that idiot in the White House is trying to seize Greenland and suddenly the news is Denmark this, Denmark that, and the Danish Prime Minister is sharing charming photos of her casually having dinner at her house with the prime ministers of Norway and Sweden and the President of Finland. And I don’t have to tell you all about that guy. Phew. This gets to just be about Danish food. More or less.¹

The first meal I ate in Denmark was porridge. Grød to be precise/what it’s called in Danish. On an early June 2015 day. On the sidewalk of Jægersborggade, in Copenhagen’s hip to the hop (at least back then—who knows now? I can’t keep up with the young’uns) Norrebro neighborhood. On a narrow wooden folding bierkeller table. It was green. It was savory. I think there were probably microgreens involved. Risotto-like. Perhaps with barley? I don’t quite remember, but I do remember it being delicious.

And I also remember thinking, as my friend Alex and I walked around town on our first gloriously warm, blue-sky day in Denmark, hopping from hip food spot to hip wine bar to hip beer bar to hip food spot— Where are we? And is this the future? Am I walking through some alternate reality? Everything seemed clean and chic and beautiful (holy smokes—Danish people are good-looking and so well-dressed!) and progressive (we passed by an elementary school that had a giant slide coming out of its top floor and there’s an entire section of the city where drugs are allowed (kind of)). Bikes everywhere. Flowers and colors and the people looked familiar, but the whole culture, the whole city was not. And everywhere we went, the food on our plates was as beautiful as the plates themselves and the chairs we sat in and the lighting fixtures overhead and..and…and…And Copenhagen was everything I had wanted it to be and more. Plus, we had snagged a reservation at Noma.

Noma.

The restaurant, the name known ‘round the world—at least in certain circles, mine obviously included.

I don't feeling like writing much about Noma. I’ll say this though: I’ve been twice. Once in the old location in 2016 with Alex and my husband and the original-ish tasting menu format. And a second time in the new spot, in late 2019, with 10 month-old Theo, my friend Priscilla and a seasonal tasting menu that included a lot of game, mushrooms and berries. Everything was beautiful and exceptional both times, though the first time I struggled with the morality of eating an elderly clam and the second time with a spoonful of raw reindeer brains. 2016 solution: I didn’t eat the geriatric bivalve and they thoughtfully brought me a plate of fancy æbleskiver to make up for it. 2019 solution: I fed the soft cervine cerebrum to my weaning baby boy— who also finished off Priscilla’s portion.

Pretty porridge with flowers and fresh peas. Reindeer brains. Ant paste. Fermented this, cured that. Hay-smoked new potatoes. Charred cabbages and scallops. Sea buckthorn everything. Hand-pulled caramels. Spruce tips. Strawberries. Cinnamon buns. Edible flowers. Pickled plums. Elderflower. Daintily-assembled-but-oh-so-filling smorrebrod. Zinc topped bars and blue mussels.

The New Nordic. Co-founder and chef at Scotland’s Inver Restaurant (and one-time stagiaire at Noma), Pam Brunton, in her gorgeous book Between Two Waters, tells us that the New Nordic cuisine pioneered by Noma “forced you to look anew at what food could be and remember it had come from the land.” Nothing wrong with that, if you ask me. I’m into it—both from a taste and ideological perspective. Brunton notes, though, that “[now] these tropes are ubiquitous” and that “New Nordic is perhaps the best branding exercise in modern food.” ’ So thanks, Rene Redzepi, your restaurant’s ethos, your food, flavors and ingredients are everywhere these days—from so-called terroir-oriented restaurants in Northern Michigan to over-priced flavored sodas in East London grocery stores.

New Nordic is the kind of food I picture when I picture Danish food. And I’m not the only one. Brunton posits that New Nordic cuisine has, in fact, “become a unifying idea in the identity of the people of Scandinavia,” and points out that “The New Nordic Kitchen Manifesto” is currently hosted on a government-sponsored website for regional cooperation. Hold up— it’s only (!) 2025. Noma opened in 2003. How’s it possible then that, in under three decades, an entire country’s (if not region, as per Brunton’s suggestion) cuisine and culinary identity has been re-created and -imagined? And, if that is the case, what was everyone eating in Denmark before Redzepi came along? That’s the question I wanted to answer this month—my month of eating Danishly.

As far as I could gather from afar/books/the internet, the answer is a lot of pork and potatoes. Delicious, delicious pork and potatoes.² And fish too. And cucumbers. And parsley. We have eaten a lot of cod and herring in our house these last few weeks. A lot of Danish food. Delightful little fried meatball patties (frikadeller) with mashed potatoes and a cold cucumber salad. Roast pork with crackling (flæskesteg) and caramelized new potatoes (brunede kartofler). My new favorite (pot) roasted chicken (grydestegt kylling). Fried pork belly with potatoes and a parsley cream sauce (stegt flæsk med persillesovs). This shit is delicious, you guys. I LOVED my trip down the more old-fashioned Danish food rabbit hole. LOVED it. Loved it so much that I’ll probably write up a recipe or two and share them with you next week. But I’m done for today.

As always, meats from https://swaledale.co.uk/

I’m done for today, and I’m annoyed with myself. I pulled out my Shakespeare this morning and thumbed through Hamlet and was going to include some bits about food in that oh-so-famous tragedy set in our titular country (e.g. Ophelia’s list of herbs and flowers including rosemary and fennel, the curdling posset involved in the late King Hamlet’s murder, etc.), but I feel dead and gone, ladies and gents, I feel dead and gone. It’s Friday. My in-laws are nearly here and I have to clean up the house, pick up the kiddo and make dinner. There’s definitely something rotten in the state of Denmark today, though, I’ll tell you that—and it’s most likely fermented and delicious and soon-to-be the hottest new thing.

1. Dear readers, have you figured it out yet? I’m tackling countries alphabetically. How very creative and original of me. Next month: E is for …..

2. There’s a reason for this. Apparently Denmark is currently home to around 2 million pigs—but this is a very historically low number. A decade ago, there were over 30 million pigs in the country (of 5.9 million people). Wow.