delicate fine-dining, in a football stadium

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Copenhagen

There can be no more incongruous location for a Michelin three-star eatery than Geranium in Copenhagen. Named the World’s Best Restaurant in 2022, it is found in an ugly grey and glass box of a giant football stadium, in the middle of a car park.

On the day I eat lunch there, the lift up is soon packed with noisy office workers stopping on all the other floors. It is a relief to enter the serene dining room, replete with Nordic minimalist design touches and a view over the local park, Fælledparken. The kitchen, I discover on a tour later in the meal, looks on to the pitch where FC Copenhagen and the Danish national team play.

Geranium was launched in 2007 by Danish head chef Rasmus Kofoed, who trained at the Hotel d’Angleterre, the grand old dame of CPH hotels, and is the only chef to have won gold, silver and bronze in the Bocuse d’Or championship. He wasn’t present during my visit, but his 18-course meal is something of a litmus test on your views on fine dining. Yes, the dishes are achingly beautiful. Yes, they are made with the best raw materials in interesting (if not unusual) taste combinations. Yes, the service is immaculate. And yes, it is impressive to see so many dishes made without meat (a deliberate choice from Kofoed).

But a nagging doubt surfaces occasionally. Although the food is delicate, elegant and new Nordic in style and technique, it sometimes falls short of wholly delicious for me. Geranium is an undoubtedly lovely experience, but is it really worth DKr4,200 ($595/£470) for the food and another DKr2,300-20,000 ($325/£260-$2,830/£2,240) for drink pairings?

The first dish is a truly gorgeous but tiny serving of Danish herring, small flowers and dill stems, served in a crispy algae tartlet and topped with a black aquavit tuile in the shape a plant. It tastes fresh, the fatty herring offset by the crunch of the greenery, and is washed down by a remarkably light glass of champagne from Adrien Renoir.

The kitchen at Geranium is, as tradition befits in Copenhagen, entirely open, with a half-dozen tattooed chefs working studiously but in a more lively and relaxed fashion than elsewhere in the city. “I need hands, please”; “mushrooms on six”; it feels somewhat like being on “The Bear” — without the shouting. Tweezers are very much in evidence.

“There’s a lot going on in this little dish” is how the chef presents the next serving. The combination of lightly smoked bleak roe, milk and kale is very delicate, rather like a savoury crème brûlée. It’s swiftly followed by boiled beetroot formed into stars and a subtle horseradish sauce, which I wished I had more of. Another glass of champagne accompanies the obligatory caviar course, served with a potato and beechnut waffle along with sour cream flavoured with pickled walnut leaves. It’s a fun, serve-yourself dish, but I find the caviar is rather overpowered.

Champagne aside, I opted for the non-alcoholic drink pairing, and it is perhaps the star of my meal. The first instalment is made from apple, fennel and dill oil with dill powder sprinkled on top. It is shaken and poured as a cocktail tableside, and draws admiring glances from other diners who enjoyed far less theatre with their wine. A later juice of blackberries and cherries is even more showy, as a sprig of pine is set alight and the smoke captured in a glass. Evidently, a great deal of thought has gone into the pairings, which is heartening to see.

I am also cheered to see a dish featuring celeriac, perhaps my favourite vegetable. But despite a dazzling spiral presentation, served with yet more caviar, it feels rather anonymous. That disappointment, however, is followed by a trio of spectacular courses. The wild mushroom soup is a stand-out of the lunch, rich and deep in flavour, accompanied by the most beautiful cheese straw you will see, shaped like a flower. A dish of walnuts, Jerusalem artichoke and fermented cabbage foam is just as good and looks like a tiny abstract painting. The sweet scallop and its roe is served with tangy dried blackcurrants, while a juice of dried raspberry, coffee and rosemary provides a complex, sweet and bitter partner.

There’s a relentlessness about fine-dining meals and I’m starting to feel full, especially for lunch. The next course — a fried bread pancake with buttermilk, pickled ramson and truffle — does little to help matters. Still, there are another two main dishes and no fewer than six desserts to go.

If there is one area restaurants in Copenhagen excel at it is sauces, and the rich, creamy sauce that accompanies the main main dish of stuffed and fried monkfish just proves this — although, like several other courses at Geranium, I find the sauce tastier than the central attraction. A quick tour of the bountiful wine cellar, prep kitchen (complete with its view of the football pitch) and a private dining room is a welcome stretch for the legs.

The desserts are uniformly beautiful with plenty of unusual ingredients, such as sea buckthorn, carrots, verbena, and pickled rosehip. The excellent final cake of seeds, elderberries and apple brandy somehow slips down easily, despite the preceding 17 courses. A highlight for me, however, is the herbal tea made from mint, thyme and lemon verbena, hand-cut by your table.

There is little doubt that Geranium offers a quintessential Copenhagen fine-dining experience in terms of food, atmosphere and price. Whether that is enough will be a question of personal taste.

Have you dined at Geranium? If you have, share your experience in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter

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