Beside the famous „nordic cuisine“ a lot of Danish classics wait for you in Oslo. Two real to-eats are pølser and smørebrød – and there are amazing places for doing it!
A pølser is basically nothing else than a hot-dog. Though the sausages are prepared in a different way than here in Austria (in Denmark they are firmer and more seasoned), the experience is similar. Specific for pølser is the heavy use of pickled cucumber 🙂 We went to a place called døp – a small caravan, that sells pølser with 100% organic ingredients. It is located right in the center of Copenhagen and definetely worth a visit (or two, or three,….).
They offer a variety of different sausages (beef/pork/cheese/goat/chicken/veg), home made dressings and serve them in many styles (as hot dog, seperate with roots and bread). This one is a „ristet hotdog“ – a roasted hot dog:
Doesn’t look like much on the picture, but it was incredible. Fantastic quality, full of taste – just a great snack. The bread was crunchy with beautiful crust and texture, the sausage VERY tasty. The real star were the trimmings though: Fresh fried onions (crunchy, explosive onion bits) and home-pickled cucumbers with a great vegetal-sweet-sour taste. Amazing, you get an idea how much you can make of „ordinary“ food, using good ingredients! And all this for 4.5€ (which is relatively cheap for DK…). It was so good, that we even went there after Noma to fill our stomachs 🙂
As a reference, we went to another quite popular shop – Andersen Bakery right next to Tivoli. They serve a rather conventional hot dog, supposedly the kind you will get when you go for hot dogs anywhere in Copenhagen.
You can see, the bread is white and more similar to a conventional fast-food bun. The sausage was good, but not as tasty as the above at døp, same for the trimmings.
Another experience you should make when visiting Copenhagen is eating smørebrød (which basically means bread’n butter). OK…the idea of putting stuff onto a slice of bread with butter is not that innovative. Given that, those Danish do a great job in preparing their breads. A great place to enjoy the art of sandwich is Aamanns:
The bread is a thin slice of dark rye bread, with a layer of butter, topped with beautifully arranged ingredients.
Those were the my favorites: roastbeef, beef tartar, blue cheese.
Well, to fill your stomach this is a rather expensive way (one bread is about 7.5€). But as a snack it is just perfect – as much for the eye, as for the tongue. They also serve an interesting variety of juices, wine and beer. I went for the Refsvindinge AZ Ale No.16, not the best beer I’ve ever had but surely an interesting variety to the ubiquitous Carlsberg.
All in all: beautiful experiences in a fascinating city! Last but not least thanks to my travel companions Babsi and Jan and of course to my hosts and friends from Copenhagen, Bjørn and Sidsel!
