Kødbyens Fiskebar

Fish Where the Butchers Worked

3.5 of 5

Kødbyen is Copenhagen's old meatpacking district, where the city's meat trade worked for generations. Kødbyens Fiskebar took one of those former butcher's shops, under the big bull on Flæsketorvet, and filled it with fish. The irony is the point. The room is industrial and loud, with a round aquarium and a glass wine cellar that both pull your eye, and it stays open all day, every day.

The sourcing is obsessive in the best way. Mussels come from organic lines in the Limfjord. Langoustines come from Swedish and Danish creel fishers. Cod comes from a coastal fishing guild at Langø, sea urchins from Iceland, and the bulk of the catch from small boats that go out in the morning and come back in the afternoon. There is a fish butchery on site, so the kitchen uses the whole animal. They even serve shore crab, an annoying bycatch in the fishermen's traps and nets, and the website tells you plainly to help the fishermen and eat it. I like a restaurant with a sense of duty and a sense of humour.

Oysters and drinks run all day. The kitchen serves lunch from 11:30 to 2:30 and dinner from 5:30 to 11, with the bar open until midnight, later on weekends. The wine list follows the same logic as the fish: natural, low intervention, nothing unnecessary. Walk in, take a seat at the bar, start with oysters, and let the staff tell you what came off the boats.

Order this: Oysters at the bar, Limfjord mussels, Whatever the coastal boats brought in, ask, Shore crab, when they have it
The damage: $$$
Go: Late afternoon for oysters at the bar, then stay for dinner
Find it: Flæsketorvet 100, 1711 København V
Website: fiskebaren.dk