After eating at Frederikshøj, I head across Jutland to the west coast, and Henne Kirkeby Kro, an old guesthouse given a stunning modern makeover by wind turbine (kroner) billionaire Flemming Skouboe – and where British chef Paul Cunningham cooks up spectacular set menus of beautifully-presented local ingredients. The guesthouse has its own 40,000m2 kitchen garden; there are already pigs and sheep on the grounds, and chickens are coming soon. “Most of what you eat here, I can grab from out the window,” says Cunningham. “If you have oysters, you know they were picked locally that morning.”
Three to try in Norway
“I don’t do hocus pocus food; that’s not what this is about” Paul Cunningham, Henne Kirkeby Kro Cunningham already has a Michelin star for his eponymous restaurant, The Paul at Tivoli Gardens, which closed in 2011 – and he’s a slightly unlikely celebrity chef in Denmark, on account of the understated beauty of his dishes, his cookbooks and his bluntly outspoken humour. Among the collection of striking contemporary photography at Henne Kirkeby Kro, one shows Cunningham with a giant overblown head, slumped abjectly over a chopping board. A few
Huset Svalbard This would be a top restaurant in Oslo, let alone 78o north. Expect the likes of reindeer, barnacle goose and seal on the menu, plus wines from a 20,000-bottle cellar. huset.com
Maki
years ago, he challenged Wassim Hallal to take him on at the Danish Hotdog Championship with a terrorist-style video that played loose with the boundaries of political correctness. The comparison with Hallal is an interesting one. Both cook up sensational set menus, but their style couldn’t be more different. Hallal cultivates the aura of a serious chef, while Cunningham calls his sourdough Keith Moon and greets diners wearing his slippers. Hallal’s signature dishes are shape-shifting potatoes or golden celery; Cunningham rejects “hocus pocus” food, saying that he does “real cooking, with frying pans rather then machines”. Another key difference is that, while Hallal is odds-on to make the Nordic Michelin guide this month, the chances are that the judges won’t make it to Jutland’s west coast, even though Henne is easily Michelin-worthy. “You know, I’m old and grey, so I can handle not getting a star here,” says Cunningham. “But it would definitely be nice for the young staff here, for the owners, for everyone involved. Whatever people say, Michelin is still the standard.” As for Michelin not making it past the big cities, Cunningham says: “I play for Team Denmark, not Team Copenhagen, and it would be nice if that gets more recognised, especially since nine out of ten ingredients they use in Copenhagen come from Jutland. I think people will be a bit disappointed if the guide doesn’t get much further than Aarhus.”
Ålesund Ole Jonny Hjelmeseth, the chef-founder of this restaurant in the waterside Brosundet Hotel, is obsessive about simply showcasing what he thinks is the world's best fish. The results are quietly beautiful. brosundet.no
Lysverket Bergen “Neo-Fjordic” cuisine might be a gimmick, but former Per Se chef Christopher Haatuft is the real deal, as is his seafood-heavy menu. lysverket.no
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Still, he refutes the idea that the Michelin guide is becoming an anachronism, pointing to the two stars awarded to the Hand and Flowers, Tom Kerridge’s unpretentious gastropub in the English village of Marlow. As for the new stars of the 50 Best list: “As much as the likes of René Redzepi and [KoreanAmerican] David Chang might see it differently, there is a logic to the way Michelin judge a restaurant – if you serve 20 dishes chosen by the chef, it’s very hard to make them all bullseyes, especially if the diner happens not to like veal tartare with ants crawling on it.” As Cunningham puts it, “‘What is delicious?’ is as complicated a question as ‘What is art?’” It’s a debate that will get a new injection later this month – for now, all you really need to know is that in Denmark, as in the rest of Scandinavia, there are some mindblowingly good restaurants that happen to be outside a capital city.
This page⁄ Paul Cunningham favours local ingredients, often from his 40,000m2 kitchen garden. Dishes on our trip included world-famous Limfjord oysters and trufflepoached pork cheek
Norwegian flies to Karup, an hour from Aarhus, and Billund, an hour from Henne Strand. Book flights, a hotel and a rental car at norwegian.com
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