By the time we head out on one of our trips; the Missus usually has me planning the next one. Well, at least the flights. The Missus missed seeing Northern Lights during our time in Iceland, so that needed to be handled. She wanted to spend more than Her usual time in "my favorite city". I knew She loved Paris because there's usually a "no more than two or three night" rule for most places.
Eventually, things came together, as they usually do. And after leaving San Diego at just past 7pm, we got into Copenhagen at around a half-past-seven the next evening. Having never flown into CPH, I wasn't sure how long immigration and transportation would take. We knew we'd definitely need something small to eat upon getting to our destination. Doing research, I found that most places closed around 9pm, at least around where we were staying. Also, it would be rather dark, a new city, so something close to our hotel was probably a good idea.
In the end, getting to Nørreport Station from the airport was quite easy. Since we don't check luggage, even for a three week trip, we grabbed our bags, and headed off. Passport check (unlike what we experienced in Brussels) took less than ten minutes. I quickly noticed something interesting. While usually low-keyed and reserved; Danes and Norwegians are quite quick to smile, not a crazy huge smile, but what seems, at least to me, a rather content one . The passport control woman looked at my passport, did her checks and gave me a smile and nod, and said "welcome, have a great stay"! The M2 metro takes you right to Nørreport Station and it was a short ten minute walk to our hotel. We enjoyed the location since it wasn't super crazy.
From there, it was literally a five minute walk to Bibendum Vinbar.
The place was pretty busy, in contrast to the rather quite streets. It was strange to see no cars actually driving on the streets. As whole, for a city with a population of over a million, we saw very few cars. In chatting with folks later, we found that any car that sold for less than around $13k was taxed at 105 percent, cars more than that are taxed at 180 percent. Also, we found the mass transit system to be quite efficient, and while not quite on the crazy level of Amsterdam, there were quite a few bikes with bike lanes everywhere.
I'd chosen Bibendum because of the later hours. The kitchen closes at 930pm. I'd made what I thought was optimistic reservations for 9pm. But due to how quickly we were able to get from the airport and check-in, we were pretty early. We decided to take the short walk down the street and see if we'd be able to eat early. While the table that was to be ours still had folks enjoying the evening, the bar area was empty, so we asked, and were seated at the bar.
I won't go into the wine we had; but will say, we were given tastes of several, based on our preferences, and enjoyed them all.
It was a light meal, just two dishes, starting with the Pate (90kr – about $14.25 US).
A rather petit portion, but fairly decent tasting combination pate of duck, pork, and chicken livers, topped with a pork aspic. Very clean, mildly offal-ly flavors. The fennel cream was interesting, but the fennel fronds really helped to cut through any richness. The fried chicken skin was crisp and quite good.
When we left San Diego, temperatures were in the 80's. Arriving in Copenhagen, it was in the high 30's. So we thought a some soup would be a good idea. We settled on the Goose Consommé (110 kr – about $17.35 US). What initially arrived at our table was a bowl containing lovely slices of smoked duck.
I had a piece of duck and it was nicely toothsome, sliced very thin, good smokiness, with a very nice savory "duckiness".
Which was nice until they poured that broth on it.
There was definitely soy sauce in this; not very good soy sauce. The was very salty and one-dimensional in flavor, with a slight tininess to it. It really tasted like very bad soy sauce ramen broth. It was a bit of a bummer as there was no rich-gamey flavors of goose in this.
Well, one out of two ain't bad. The wine was very nice, though the temperature was a bit off. The folks working here were very nice as well.
Bibendum Vinbar
Nansensgade 45
Copenhagen 1366, Denmark
And….we were on vacation….in Copenhagen.
