A Taste of Copenhagen

ACME Restaurant

After Copenhagen restaurant Noma secured its third consecutive number one ranking in the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list this year, there was little doubt remaining that the Danes really know their food. But while the now world-famous chef Rene Redzepi continues to work his wonders behind those fabled kitchen counters, the other, and lesser-known Noma founder Mads Refslund is donning his chef’s apron thousands of miles away across the Atlantic, in hip New York City restaurant ACME.

Formerly a casual Cajun eatery called ‘ACME Bar and Grill’, the current iteration of ACME has been stripped of the hearty Southern fare and given a makeover by the team behind trendy establishments like Indochine and BondSt, resulting in seriously stylish downtown digs serving Refslunds’ signature New Nordic cuisine to the city’s hipsters and locavores.

The focus is still on foraged and local ingredients, with the menu divided into categories such as ‘soil’, featuring seasonal veggies like heirloom tomatoes and beets, and ‘sea/land’, with arctic char and lamb among the offerings, plus cult favourite ‘duck in a jar’ (duck confit and pickled vegetables) makes a welcomed cameo. After dinner, be sure to head downstairs to the restaurant’s subterranean lounge and enjoy one of their signature cocktails like the ‘Acme Old-Fashioned’ with bourbon, white sugar, angostura bitters and orange peel. To the Danes!