The Lego Mini Chef restaurant, Denmark — review

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I’m going to have to start this with a bit of a confession. I’m quite unusually interested in Lego. Just to clarify, I’m not an AFOL, an “Adult Friend of Lego”, but I’m really quite keen. I loved it as a kid, rediscovered it when my daughter was growing up and now, well, if you were to pop round, you might find me sitting at a table, making a detailed representation of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye out of plastic bricks. Look. There are lots of far less pleasant enthusiasms I could indulge at my age. At least this is quiet and legal.

But my interest is such that my family decided to take me on a trip to Lego headquarters in the Danish town of Billund, where I was able to visit their theme park, but also the astonishing new Lego House, designed by Danish star-architect Bjarke Ingels. I also got to spend a precious hour in the company archive — a secure, climate-controlled vault where you can take down from the shelves any Lego set ever made, going back to the first, “Lego System 236 Garage with Automatic Door” (1956).

Like I said. Unusually interested.

So what has this got to do with restaurants? Well, I also got to eat at the Mini Chef café inside the Lego House. You sit at your table and a cheery staff member pops up to explain the “concept”. You choose from the menu, where each dish is represented by a different Lego brick. Then you physically “build” your order using pieces stashed in the cutlery holder. This is scanned by a monitor unit on the table, which then begins playing an animated mini-movie showing your order being constructed by little Lego people in a human-scale kitchen. Your meal is then delivered by a conveyor system overseen by two large robots.

Salmon à la bonne femme (Red 2-brick), oven-roasted potatoes with herbs and lemon (Blue “slope” brick), “3-in-1 mushroom symphony with fried, creamy and pickled mushrooms” (Black 4-brick), tomato salad with mozzarella and balsamic glaze (Green “slope” brick). I watched the screen in delight as the animated mini figures woke up, prepared my meal and deposited it at their end of the moving belt.

Thirty seconds later, it appeared on the conveyor in the dining room, and, considering I was eating it out of a huge Lego brick, it was absolutely delightful. I reckon the little yellow guys did a great job.

No, I hadn’t actually lost my mind. Lego is one of the most beloved and respected toys in the world because it taps into something amazing in the human mind. A child can jam together a handful of plastic cuboids and genuinely believe it’s a car, a ship, a dinosaur or a rocket. They sustain that idea while they play, for hours, completely embedded in a world that exists solely inside their imagination. It’s a powerful and innate ability to suspend disbelief. Something we don’t necessarily lose as we get older.

I’d spent a morning wandering around a theme park where my grip on reality was gently reshaped by castles, a space-station, menageries, a coral reef and an exploration lab in the tundra. So by the time I went to the café to have mini-figures make my lunch, I was mentally predisposed to let it pass unquestioned. And, yes, I was happy to “believe” for the duration of the meal.

The following day, after a very grown-up factory visit, all hard hats and ear defenders, ducking between full-size robotic arms and miles of conveyor system, after a very intense presentation on the social and political history of Lego, we were taken to the executive dining room (not a press perk, just what the VIP fan experience entails).

It’s a much more grown-up space. Cool, austere Danish design. Dark wood panelling. Discreetly lit shelving for one or two vanishingly recherché Lego models, elegant tables and designer chairs. On one side, a long glass wall looks out over the Mini Chef canteen and the happy diners. Then a young chef came in. His whites were immaculate, as was his English describing the meal. The provenance of the salmon and its place in Danish cuisine, the type of potato and their origin on a nearby farm. The way they had carefully chosen the mushrooms and emphasised their flavours and textures by preparing them three ways.

On china plates rather than a plastic box, contextualised by an upmarket dining setting, I was entirely happy to believe that my meal had been prepared by this clear-eyed, young Dane, but it was, of course, exactly the same food, from the same kitchen.

At one level I’m completely aware that both meals had been prepared in exactly the same way and on the balance of probabilities it was done by full-size humans in whites not 40mm-high articulated plastic mannequins. But I don’t know for absolute certain and I’m not in a hurry to find out. My ability to enjoy both meals obviously depended on my ability to suspend disbelief . . . But then, I find myself thinking, doesn’t it always?

When the celebrity chef’s name is over the door, I believe in their input, though I know they’ve not been in the kitchen in years. When I’m told an ingredient was “foraged”, I imagine the cooks stalking through the forest at dawn rather than ordering from a supplier. The same is true when they tell me the steak comes from a deliriously happy cow or was aged in salt-walled vaults, and the sommelier tells me about wine made in some ancient château or stewed in a hipster’s bucket. It’s all a gigantic exercise in consensual self-delusion that we embrace with unquestioning zeal.

Our belief in our restaurant fantasies makes mucking about with an occasional box of bricks look quite sane in comparison.

Follow Tim on Instagram @timhayward

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