The CPH Crawl (II): Herman

After a short cab ride through snowy Copenhagen (and finishing off our brilliant doggy bags) we arrived at the hotel Nimb at the Tivoli where the one star Restaurant Herman is located. The Nimb is clearly one of the best hotels in town and had been reopened as the New Nimb in May 2008 along with its gourmet restaurant Herman. Soon in 2009 Herman did receive its first Michelin star.

Thomas Herman

Chef Thomas Herman was born in Jutland and worked at Kong Hans, Arzak and La Broche in Madrid. He stresses that the recollection of memories is an important aspect of tasting of a particular dish – he plays with the emotions of the diner by re-interpretations of traditional Danish and Nordic dishes. This is appealing to me – memories of previous encounters with a certain dish or flavour combinations evoke emotions and add another dimension to the dining experience. So, I was ready to experience Thomas’ cuisine…

Continue reading

The Copenhagen Crawl is Coming Up

When I started reading the international food forums and blogs I almost immediately stumbled on Steve Plotnickis’ Opinionated About – the first post I read was about Steve’s brilliant dinner at Oud Sluis which forced me to go there this very year. A couple of posts later I read that chef Sergio Herman of this very restaurant had called Steve and asked for advice where to eat in New York. Finally, this ended up in Steve arranging the first restaurant crawl with him and Sergio eating at various important NYC restaurants on one night.

A bit later Steve met Jay Rayner who was about to write his book “The man who ate the world” and they discussed whether Jay could follow Steve while he was dining in New York. Inspired by the crawl with Sergio Steve finally proposed a NYC restaurant crawl in search for the perfect meal. The idea is simple: just assemble some of the best restaurants in town, think about their strength & weaknesses and then visit them one after the other which each serving some of the signature dishes. Setting is up, however, turns to be less that easy as Steve reported.

Since these 2007 events attention of the global food scene has moved north to Copenhagen where noma is maybe the brightest star and has a couple of very interesting brothers and sisters which are important in their own right (too bad that Geranium has closed their doors). So, quite naturally, Copenhagen would be ideal for a crawl and Laurent (from Gastros-on-Tour) and Trine (from Very Good Food) arranged the Copenhagen crawl: one city – one dinner – six guests – six restaurants…

The restaurant line-up for Feb 4:

– 17:45 : Kiin Kiin * – http://www.kiin.dk/
– 18:30 : Herman * – http://www.nimb.dk/
– 19:30 : The Paul * – http://www.thepaul.dk/
– 20:30 : Noma ** – http://www.noma.dk/
– 21:30 : MR * – http://www.mr-restaurant.dk/
– 22:45 : Sollerod Kro * – http://www.soelleroed-kro.dk/

The foodie line-up:

– Very Good Food (Danish food blogger) http://verygoodfood.dk/
– High-End-Food (me;-))
– Food Intelligence (French food blogger) http://www.foodintelligence.blogspot.com/
– Opinionated About Dining (US food blogger and restaurant guide owner) http://www.opinionatedaboutdining.com/
– Gastros on Tour (French food blogger) http://gastrosontour.wordpress.com/
– Sensum.be (Belgian restaurant webguide) http://www.sensum.be

It will be very interesting to see how these restaurants show us their aspects of Nordic cuisine, how the different styles and dishes interact and complement each other and how the overal nordic ‘movement’ presents itself…

Stay tuned – besides on Facebook coverage will be provided on each blog…