The CPH Crawl (V): MR

After noma we took a large taxi back into mid-town Copenhagen to experience MR – Mads Refslund’s fine restaurant.

MR (thanks to FoodSnob)

I had eaten there before is temporary closure in April 2009 and must admit that I enjoyed it very much, especially his burnt field dish where Mads shows that odour is an important part of the overall ‘tasting’ experience of a dish. In essence, Mads’ cuisine is very similar to noma as he was part of the first hour noma team after René and Claus started the project. After six months the friends did realize that they couldn’t work very well together and departed in friendship. In 2005, an investor offered Mads the chance to open his own venture MR. After this investor went bankrupt in the beginning of 2009, he had to close MR in April and reopened it as a seafood restaurant end of June 2009.

Oysters and sake (thanks Trine)

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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…