Copenhagen - The Little Mermaid and a Memory Card Fail at Bror

After a nice break for lunch at Almanak, we headed back out. The Missus had seeing the statue of the Little Mermaid on her agenda.

We walked past the very Amsterdam looking Nyhavn Canal. There was a Christmas Market there as well. We'd walk though it on our return visit to the city.

Past the distinctive Opera House.

Until we got to the area known as Langelinie. Walking alongside the water you'll see a crowd of people. Of course, it has to be the Little Mermaid.

Shades of Mannekin Pis is pretty much all I have to say.

Watching the crowd is actually more interesting. As they try and get selfies and sometimes as close as possible to this rather small statue.

A study in human nature.....

As we walked back in the direction of our hotel, we did pass a couple of interesting sights in the area. This is the Ivar Huitfeldt Column which commemorates a battle during the Great Northern War.

And this striking fountain.

This is the Gefion Fountain. The dramatic scene depicts the Goddess Gefion driving four bulls. It is Copenhagen's creation story if you will.

According to the legend, the Swedish King promised to give Gefion all the land she could plough in one night. Gefion turned her four sons into oxen and carved out what is now known as Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen resides.

We also found the church in back of the statue; Saint Alban's (also known as the English Church) to be quite striking as well.

  We headed back to the hotel, down the street known as Bredgade. It had started to drizzle a bit, so we looked around for a place to have a short respite. We noticed a church with an impressive copper dome, so we decided to take a look.

This is Frederiks Kirke (Frederik's Church), a Lutheran Church and has quite a story. The church was designed in 1740 and work started in 1749. But due to literally death and taxes, the site stood in ruin for over a hundred years. In what at the time was a highly controversial move, the land was sold to Industrialist Carl Frederik Tietgen on the condition that a church be built along the lines of the original plans and that it be donated to Denmark when completed? So what did Tietgen get out of it? Well, in turn he acquired land rights in the area.

There's a word you'll hear quite often in Denmark; Hygge. To me, it seems more of a concept than a word; that feeling one gets, I believe you can be alone or among friends. A coziness, that content feeling, secure, trusting, comfort...... Our hotel had "hygge hour", basically happy hour in the lobby. The Missus had a glass of wine, I had a pilsner. It was nice and relaxing.

We then headed off to dinner. I had a list of places to try but had to cross off a bunch of them because I couldn't get reservations. Amass comes to mind. Bummer, because the chef and owner, Matt Orlando is form San Diego. I had heard so much about "New Nordic (Danish) Cuisine". I went ahead and got reservations at Restaurant Bror; opened by two former sous-chefs at Noma.

Anyway, here's what happened. During the meal, my memory card failed. I have a couple of SD cards that are getting fairly old. Since, unlike the two Asian Young Ladies who we saw taking copious notes during their meal at Bror, I don't take notes....it's my memory and the photos that cue up many of my recollections of my meal. Guess my gear is getting old. This is the second card to go over the last 3-4 months. Sorry to say you won't be getting a post on our wonderful meal at Sushi Noguchi.....or I may just do a COMC with the photos that made it.

So, the deal with Bror is that you get either a four or five course set menu. You can also order a selection of snacks. Things like Bull Balls....yes, literally bull balls and such. The menu features some interesting ingredients, which we found in most cases to be too salty, put together in combinations where nothing really stood out. Several times; we ate each of the ingredients from the composed dishes and found them to be quite good separately, but together it was just a mish-mash.

For some reason, the Missus really didn't care for the bone marrow butter. I found the bone marrow and pickled pumpkin crispbread to have a rather unpleasant clash of flavors and textures....think pickled lard.

And so it went. The service was excellent and the wine tasting was fabulous.

But overall, this just didn't do it for us.

The dishes seemed to lack focus and direction. The cod head was supposed to have horseradish sauce; which tasted just like plain mayonnaise.

The best item we had was the cod - pesto lettuce cup. Though you really could have been eating any type of fish since all the clashing flavors cancelled each other out.

Sad, because I was really looking forward to these meals. This also kind of turned the Missus off on set menus....though it was kind of too late for Her because I had reservations at places in Amsterdam and Paris that had multi-course set menus. Luckily, we enjoyed those meals much more, especially Alliance in Paris.

So perhaps it's better that I just leave it at that.

Restaurant Bror
Skt. Peders Stræde 24 A
Copenhagen, Denmark

I still had an open evening during our return trip to Denmark. I was going to make reservations for a late lunch at a Copenhagen main stay that has been around since the 19th century or a set menu dinner at another restaurant. Guess what won out?

Comments

[kat]

bummer about the memory cards.

[Kirk]

I know...though I was more bummed about the meal Kat.

[Junichi]

Always carry extra memory cards! They're so cheap nowadays.

[Kirk]

I always have at least two back-up cards Junichi. This was a strange one since I got no card write error on my camera. However, when I attempted to download a few photos to my iPad I got a card read error. I always try to have some redundancy; even if it is using my phone. Lucky that I tried to download that same evening. I managed to pull off as much as I could using some recovery softerware.