Barr, Strandgade 93, 1401 Copenhagen, Denmark
It's funny how things turn out
“If you want God to laugh, tell Him your plans” is a saying that’s never quite made sense. The Big Man is omniscient; a celestial know-it-all, so your plans will come as no surprise to Him whatsoever. Better still, is divulging them to your colleagues.
For years, I worked on a factory assembly line where talks of their weekend plans revolved around three things:
Desperately promoting yet another 1am B2B set of ‘rollers’ for their mate’s night at the local dive in an attempt to convince each other that we weren’t failed musicians
Bitter disappointment that capitalism didn’t work out for them, despite pissing their generational wealth up the wall
Cocaine
Because I always thought their music sounded like R2D2 and C3PO mating during a seizure, I preferred to go to restaurants instead. Met with pitying laughter over spending £100 on a meal and not a gram, they failed to realise that I’d yet to sneeze and accidentally blow a whole taster menu into the ether.
During this time, I’d only ever dreamt about Noma, with no money to entertain the idea of ever actually going. I became obsessed with the pervading ‘New Nordic’ movement, characterised by lava lamps of creamy sauces split with dill oil and sanguine cuts of deer. I loved the admirable approach to plating that required multi-layered tweezer pedantry, ultimately rendered pointless by a final flourish that would invariably cover it all up.
Mentions of ‘Noma’ and, for some reason, ‘mouthfeel’ became preferred terms of trolling me on the assembly line. Naturally, by the time I’d saved enough to think seriously about visiting, having waxed about it to anyone in earshot, the Lord included, Noma went on a year hiatus before deciding to up-tweezers, pack its garum and koji into a bindle to go on tour. In its place would be Barr — the brainchild of Redzepi and Thorsten Schmidt, regarded as another pioneer of ‘New Nordic’ cuisine.
Sadly, after nearly 20 years of the world flocking to kiss Redzepi’s ring, so to speak, Noma’s legacy would be marred by reports of barely paid stagiaires. But, as they say, you can’t possibly expect to make a cod sperm omelette without breaking a few employment laws.
Derived from the old Norse for ‘barley’, Barr was determined not to be just ‘another Nordic restaurant’, predicated on food from the North Sea with some nods to Denmark’s brewing heritage thrown in. Inside, however, it’s your classic Nordic palate, as if constructed from beached longboats and whatever’s left of the monastery.
The menu is deliberately accessible: roasted smoked bone marrow, thick cuts of beef and pork chops, fat glowing with age, aided by the ageing chambers tucked in and around the restaurant floor. The pork schnitzel and ratte potatoes have become the most popular combinations, encapsulating Barr’s ‘meat & potatoes’ approach.
A blend of Schmidt’s love for beer and Redzepi’s love for minimising waste, Barr’s sourdough is made with beer mash, crusted with poppyseed alongside slices of traditional rye, studded with tender flaxseed and a fat coin of salted butter.
Rye bread past its Best Before is sliced thin and pressed to form crackers; the flax seed caramelised to amber, all to carry the weight of bone marrow that’s been smoked and then grilled, dolloped with a mulch of parsley, thyme, dill and unripe black currants.
A testudo of pert radicchio shields a mound of beef tartare, black pepper mayonnaise, lingonberries and pickled mustard seeds and is quietly superb. It’s a slight deviation from Barr’s mission statement, flitting between France, Italy, and Scandinavia, but at its core is a wit, toying with the idea of accessibility; mimicking the flavours of a classic tartare while being utterly transformed by an intensely fresh bitterness.
Maultaschen, a Swabian-style pork and onion dumpling, with morel and sage woven throughout and a pork and morel broth poured last minute, causes a hidden cache of dill oil to constellate across the surface. Despite appearing as a piece of confectionery found in a home that doesn’t believe in sugar or sex, it’s a warming, reassuring under-the-table-thigh-squeeze that makes you want to sleep over.
The schnitzel is the John Everyman of dishes, yet Barr takes things a step further in a way that’s elevated but entirely generous, flying in the face of accusations that restaurants at this level are stingy. A saucepan of browned butter bobs with wild garlic buds, capers, shallots, garlic and anchovies that you can’t spoon over the shimmering schnitzel greedily enough.
Hasselback potatoes — a Kettle Chips factory reject by any other name — are adorned with more pickled wild garlic buds. It’s not quite the deep, burnished hues I’ve been led to believe, with somehow those tides of foaming butter missing one end before it’s been finished. You bet I’m fun at parties.
Cleated with horseradish is a whipped cream so light, it doesn’t even register resistance to cutlery, along with sprouts that have had the sugars coaxed out of them via a hard grilling, resulting in doubled bitterness and sweetness. Another dish carries a dollop of crème fraîche, the like of which is only issued by a concerned mother.
In an act of proud nationalism that would be considered more of a warning shot in the UK, a Danish flag is placed on any table celebrating a birthday as a tradition. Typically a shy, retiring type unless Crémant and dogs are involved, The Editor endures being the focus of the dining room with aplomb.
Cherry halves lurk among a bitter chocolate mousse with a proper bite of salt, under a Teflon-smooth layer of chocolate ice cream. Finished with dehydrated raspberries, cocoa nibs and powder, it resembles a fatality near the Hornby Railway with a single candle holding vigil.
With Barr situated inside a building burnt into memory as that of Noma, it’s on par with a chassis of a Formula 1 car that’s since been retrofitted with a Skoda engine — a workhorse whose reputation is solid and only mocked by those who can’t drive anyway.
Having bleated about my plans to visit Noma for so long and inevitably putting it on a pedestal, Barr could well’ve amounted to a memorial visit, warped by a sense of pining. With an atmosphere of being cooked for by the fun auntie in the house of the strict, minted one away on holiday, Barr’s charm inoculates any sense of longing for Noma with a sort of banality instead.
Years of expectations grown under fluorescent factory lights have morphed into something infinitely better — among all my plans, celebrating the birthday of a best friend I’d fancied for nearly 20 years, only to marry, was not one I, or my former colleagues, could’ve predicted. They might be laughing, but like me, I’m sure it’s in pure disbelief.
