I was invited to speak at a Scandinavian cinema conference the week before Fantastic Fest. That timing couldn’t be worse. So I said “No … BUT if you can get me a reservation at Alchemist, I’ll come”. Lo and behold they did the impossible, and so, terrible timing be damned, Karrie and I flew out with the kiddos to Copenhagen for a culinary adventure. The table was just for two, so we sent Opie and CC out into Tivoli Gardens for their first big solo adventure while we had our 5 hour epic meal.
The night started with the dramatic opening of some mighty carved wooden doors. Once inside we were told that the first “impression” was behind the thick grey curtain behind us. Impression is their word for the (mostly food) experiences.
Impression #1 (and #2): Act I
The night started out in an awesome awkward way, a bedazzled dancer in full body tights pranced about us, encouraged us to dance together, and offered us our first bite. I was too uncomfortable to video or shoot photos of the dancer, a fear for which I was ridiculed during Impression #2. Or is it #3? I think I’m calling dancing and paper-thin chocolate wafers two impressions. From there we were guided into the lounge for Impressions 3 and beyond.
We were seated next to the first of two open kitchens where an army of chefs with tweezers and heat guns were finishing and plating the impressions to come. This kitchen space was a stunning art piece in and of itself. The jars on the back wall are inspiration and occasional ingredients. This space is the lab kitchen when dinner isn’t being served. When hired, each staff member brings a flavor from their past or their home country to share with the team. And. for the pairing, unsurprisingly, we chose the experimental flight with not just wine but a variety of interesting beverage directions.
Next up, we ordered cocktails and the drink pairing for the rest of the night. There was a pretty rad medieval-diagram-looking dial on a tablet for choosing and explaining options, both for their drink pairings and the 10,000 bottle 3 story wine cellar (see below). We opted for two cocktails, the Hunt and the Gooseberry Breeze. I couldn’t pass up the Hunt, as one of the ingredients was distilled rabbit ears. It did have a gamey, meaty taste in a pleasant way.
Impression #3: Daisy
A delightful cocktail, drank like a creamy, airy shot, bright lemon verbena with some sort of membrane to create surface tension. Once consumed, the flower cups nest in a very attractive vase. Delicious and beautiful!
Impression #4: Smokey Ball
Delicate gluten pastry ball filled with smoke and topped with cream and Osetra caviar. Delicious! Maybe my favorite caviar dish of all time?
Impression #5 Dumpling
This one was one of Karrie’s early favorites. The dumpling wrapper was was crafted out of spun fibers, something akin to cotton candy but not that sweet, only slightly sweet. That sweetness was counterbalanced with bok choy and Thai chili sauce.
Impression #6: Omelette
OK, this one was really insane. The egg is blown out, and the egg membrane is peeled away from the shell and treated in some mysterious way to make it more flexible and durable. A really decadent, fluffy truffle, black pepper, and egg cream is tempered and four different temperatures before being injected back into the membrane. This little sucker is perfectly warm, gooey, and, holy smokes, damned tasty. And you could safely pick up the little oval and pop it into your mouth without it breaking.
Impression #7: Sunburnt Bikini
A variation on a typical Spanish tapa with cheese and ham. This one was a mochi exterior with warm gruyere and premium jamon serrano. The hits keep coming.
Impression #8: Sea Buckthorn Tonic
A frozen gin and tonic served at -30 Celsius. A fun little palate cleanser before heading to the next room for the big show.
This was the last dish in the bar. We were escorted first into the truly impressive three-story wine cellar and then seated in the main dining room, the famous audio-visual show stopper.
Impression #9: Double Trouble
In many dishes, Alchemist focuses on ways to eat invasive species as well as sustainably use traditionally discarded portions of ingredients. For this dish, slices of raw invasive moon jellyfish and combined with rosa rugosa oil made from the non-native plant currently taking over the Danish coastline. Topped with fish sauce, green chilies, gyokuro tea, and beach herbs. And by the way, Alchemist’s plateware game is on point. As you can see over chef Munk’s shoulder, we’ve entered the main eating arena, a huge room with a star of tables at the edge. The ceiling is a 360-degree massive dome filled with a rotation of video projections that mirror the food in front of you. The video below is the first transition, from fish scales to jellyfish. We were also served a really beautifully presented matcha tea to gently start things off before the eating frenzy truly began.
Impression 10: 1984
Plateware going to 11 on this one, inspired by George Orwell’s book and our current political environment. This is the moment where ol’ Rasmus started to wear his politics on his heavy-handed sleeve. But it’s fun and tasty, so we were in. The stone eyeball bowl had a deep cup cut in for the pupil, filled with white asparagus juice, pistachios, and raw hamachi, it is topped with caviar and a fish eye gel. We were told to dig deep and get a bit of each. We did.
Impression #12: Space Bread
The Alchemist food lab partners with various scientific and government organizations. For this dish, they partnered with NASA to study gastronomy in space. This dish features a bread that does not need to be baked. Vegetable leftovers & milk proteins are aerated and then infused with an aroma of sourdough bread and freeze-dried. To make it super tasty, it was topped with a heaping portion of caviar. It did serve as the perfect caviar receptacle!
Impression #13: Lobster Claw
#13 is Alchemist’s version of a lobster roll. Danish lobster coated in a crispy cornstarch batter (the roll) with a smoked butter and horseradish dipping sauce. Around this time we had a truly extraordinary sake. I need to try to track this one down…
Impression #14 Marine Invaders
A crispy shell made from a caramelized boullion of invasive Danish beach crabs covering a creamy layer of pureed invasive Faroe Islands sea urchin mixed with whole sea urchin. Very, very, very, very tasty.
Impression #15 Plastic Fantastic
Chef Munk’s direct political statements are on proud (and tasty) display with #15. A cod jaw is topped with a dehydrated bouillon of cod skin, “fish plastic” and delivered to the table with the message that 60% of ocean fish have microplastics stuck in their digestive system. But this plastic was mighty tasty, maybe because it was brushed with smoked bone marrow. We also learned at around this time that the restaurant buys whole fish, takes the jawbone or whatever morsel they are using for the paying customers’ menus, and then uses the rest of the fish for the meal that they serve to the homeless. They do this with a wide variety of the menu items that they are serving.
Impression #16: King Crab
A king crab body was presented to showcase the huge body of the crab that is currently thrown away after harvesting crabs. The Alchemist crab “loaf” had an exterior that mimicked the look of crab shell with an interior made with the meat from the nooks and crannies of the body. This came with a smoked butter and Asian citrus dipping sauce.
Impression #17: Hunger
Cured fillet of rabbit with harissa sauce and Nordic herbs. Although this certainly was a grade A presentation, it was not our favorite dish. The dish was presented with the message that 25,000 children are dying of hunger every day. Rabbits could be a part of the solution – they can exist worldwide and of course, reproduce like rabbits. With this course, we were also served a dry hopped orchid kombucha.
Impression #18: Don’t Waste Your Breath
Another sustainability message from Chef Munk. Thin slices of pig windpipe pressure-cooked with chili sauce and wasabi flowers. We both really dug this, similar in look and feel to calamari.
Impression #19: Burnout Chicken
You begin by freeing the chicken from the cage to show that you understand the cruelty associated with the commercial poultry industry. But on to the food… The dish is served on an actual chicken foot (that you don’t eat). The end is coated in poached chicken and shrimp, glazed with tamarind and that is coated in crispy potato bits. This was another really yummy one.
Impression #20: Soup on a Sausage Peg
Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s 1858 short story “Soup on a Sausage Peg.” In the story, mice are enjoying a feast of moldy bread and contemplating the phrase “make soup from a sausage peg” they’ve heard humans say. The mouse king challenges his subjects to figure out the recipe of how to make something out of nothing. Anyhow, the dish features cultivated moldy bread inspired by Mugaritz’s Andoni Luis Aduriz’s Moldy Apple (the inspiration for this blog!). The Hans Christian Anderson Silhouette is made of herbs. A broth of beef and jamon serrano is poured over the silhouette to create a deep, rich, delicous soup.
Impression 21: Airy Bread
A little flower of jamon serrano on the most delicate slice of bread. Popped in the mouth all in one bite. Delicious. Served with a barrel-aged Belgian red ale.
Impression #22: Tongue Kiss
An incredible bit of cutlery topped with a delicious mix of yuzu, finger lime, wasabi flower toasted sourdough, and shizu. So tasty, we sucked the tongue clean. A woman to our right had to steel herself to put this in her mouth.
Impression #23: Lithophane
3D printed savory Jerusalem artichoke dip with delicate crackers. If they can’t find your face online, they give you Frieda Kahlo or something like that. They could have chosen a much stranger photo for me. Thankfully they played it straight. This version of me was tasty.
Impression #24: Food For Thought
Best serviceware of the night! Since the mad cow disease outbreak in the 80s (note humans can’t get mad cow disease), brains are illegal to serve in England and other European countries. Chef’s message: bring back brains! These steamed lamb brains over brioche were quite tasty indeed. Food for thought was also served with an extraordinary 1973 Madeira, aged in barrels for a LONG time (decades) before bottling.
Impression #25: Cheers
We were not allowed to take a photo of the cheers moment, but the lights went out and all of our drinks were bioluminescent, powered by jellyfish!
Impression #26: Reflection
The first of the many, many (seven precisely) desserts was some sort of musing on identity and technology, the ceiling was full of tech, recent news with some monitors featuring live feeds from the restaurant. The treat was a super-thin blackcurrant sheet with ice cream and a thin sort of graham cracker. Some people were receiving 1984 in the dining room while. we received Reflection, the ceiling worked for both.
Impression #27: Andy Warhol
#27 was a super yummy dish. It was one of the originals since they first opened in their former 15-seat tiny restaurant. Bursting with flavor, Andy Warhol was a chocolate shell filled with an intense banana cream.
Impression #28: Lifeline
I appreciated the beauty of this one, but like Hunger, it turns out pig blood ice cream on pig blood ganache is not my absolute favorite. Created to raise awareness about the importance of blood donations, Lifeline is a blood drop of ice cream where pig’s blood replaces eggs and acts as an emulsifier. It is filled with blueberry jam and a “ganache” made of pig’s blood, deer blood garum, and juniper oil. It’s all served on a plate with a QR code leading to the official page to sign up as a blood donor in Denmark. Fun, but taste-wise…. challenging. That said, it was served with. a delicious pine nut liqueur, so that helped.
Impression #29: Guilty Pleasure
A little chocolate bar shaped like a coffin that reminds you that most of the mass-produced chocolate we eat is produced by slaves with attrocious working conditions.
Guilty Pleasure was the last impression in the dining theater. We were escorted into a bright white stark room and asked to take off our shoes and jump into the room next door. I dove. We were fully embracing the request to play around in this strange room when, after a couple of minutes solo…
Impression #30: Ball Pit
Impression 30 came to life. There was a staff member hiding beneath the surface of the balls who came out to play with us. This is a rather singular career, but she was really good at playing in a ball pit, so worthy of the challenge. I’m very glad my dive didn’t land me right on top of her!
After the ball pit adventure, we were then toured through the kitchen to see their elaborate kitchen automation and nerve center for the main service.
After the tour, we were escorted. to the bar overlooking the backside of the dining AV dome. This space truly embodied the Danish Hygge sensibility, dim and cozy, a place we could hang out and chat for a long time. We loved it up there. Karrie had one of the finest tea services of her life while I had a wonderfully rich (and NOT over-roasted – they were emphatic about that) coffee, followed by 3 more desserts. and one more parting cocktail.
Impression #31: Amber
Bit out of focus, sorry. Must be the drink pairing. Chef Rasmus used to collect amber on the coasts of Jutland as a child. To see if it was amber and not glass or stone, he had to bite it to see if his teeth made a mark. Red wood ants are trapped in this honey ginger version of amber.
Impression #32: Cubic Margarita
Alchemist has a serious frozen cocktail game. A bright little moment, perfect margarita balance but in a frozen block that your teeth just slid through.
Impression #33 In a Nutshell
striated caramelized milk and cocoa crisp draped over hazelnut ice cream. As you might expect, delicious.
Impression #34: Tarte Tartin
A rather delicious caramel apple tart built to evoke the wonderful lamps that were illuminating the room.
Impression #35: Exit
Whoops, failed to take a photo of the last impression. This was a black room with 100s of words that people have used to describe Alchemist over the years online, in reviews and conversations overheard by tthe chef. From pretentious and overpriced to magical and transcendent, you were asked to read and reflect on what resonated with the last five hours of your life.
For us, well worth the price and a magical journey we will never forget.
Rotten Apples and Other Delights 