We recently had our first visitor (Bill) in Copenhagen, and I looked around for some uniquely Danish food we could have for lunch. I came across a few reviews of a place down at Nyhavn, called Nyhavn’s Færgekro (literally Nyhavn’s Ferry Inn) that serves a herring buffet (sildebord) at lunchtime and at this time of year, Nyhavn shouldn’t be too busy as the tourist season hasn’t started yet.
A selection of herring
Nyhavn’s Færgekro is a tall light blue coloured building at the end of Nyhavn closer to Kongens Nytorv. The restaurant looked quite busy, and though there were seats outside, it was a bit chilly. Next time we should maybe make a reservation, because as well as a pretty full restaurant, there was a private function going on in part of the restaurant.
Nyhavn’s Faergekro
If the idea of 10 different types of herring (or sild in Danish) is not your thing, there are plenty of other things on the menu, including Smørrebrød (Danish Open Sandwiches), salads, and burgers, but were else were we going to try different types of herring. We ordered some beer, what else goes with herring, and walked downstairs to start sampling the array of herring. Given that it was quite busy, it took a little while to work our way around the buffet without bumping into our patrons.
The buffet selection included hot and cold options of marinated herring, herring in cream sauces with herbs, fried herring with horseradish and caviar, rullemops, smoked herring, baby potatoes, rugbrod, chopped chives, red onions, dripping, butter, crunchy pork rinds, etc. Since none of us know Danish, the menu is in English as well, to help us know the different types of herring we were eating. Apart from one type of cured herring, that was very salty, we enjoyed pretty much all the options, but I think we all agreed that the best was the ‘Sol over Gudhjem’, which was the smoked herring with a raw egg yolk, chopped red onions and chives.
Some more herring
After our 2nd helping I asked if we could sample some aquavit, which also goes well with herring. The waitress brought across a basket of different flavoured aquavits for us to choose from and filled the glasses to the absolute top.
If you’re ever in Copenhagen, I can certainly recommend Færgekro for experiencing a nice restaurant and as much herring as you could ever image, and at 119Kr it is pretty good value for money.
Aquavit