Tacos and Tivoli
In which the author decides to go to Denmark of all places to eat tacos.
Day 1
Pilgrimage
The flight to Copenhagen is possibly the most pleasant air travel experience I have ever had. Helsinki Airport is almost empty, and security is over in moments. There’s a hint of trouble at the gate with carry-on luggage but it turns out to be nothing. I even get “upgraded” to an exit seat with more legroom.
I am excited. I have been planning this trip for a month with one singular purpose in mind: to try the tacos at Hija de Sanchez. I first heard of Rosio Sanchez’ taqueria via David Chang’s brilliant show Ugly Delicious, and was instantly struck by the level of quiet passion with which Sanchez seemed to approach her mission to bring real Mexican food to Copenhagen. I wanted it. I needed it. I had not had a decent taco since I left the United States over 5 years ago now, so after a second appearance on Somebody Feed Phil, I simply could no longer wait: I sat down then and there and booked a trip. I even registered on the wait-list for a reservation at Sanchez, her new flagship restaurant.
As my plane prepared to take off, however, there came a sobering irony: a story popped up on Facebook, detailing the Danish government’s new policy of literal ghettos for refugees and migrants.
My family on my mother’s side were predominantly Danish. My grandparents were refugees who fled during the war, as their country was invaded by people with very similar policies on dealing with ethnic minorities. I wasn’t raised with any Danish culture, my grandparents, as many of that generation, wanted their children to “assimilate,” so never even taught them the language. Nevertheless, I grew up wanting to see Denmark, and now, just as I’m preparing to finally see a place my family once fled because of fascism, here is fascism’s ugly head once more, but with the shoe on the other foot.
The flight lands after a short and perfectly pleasant trip. To my complete surprise, I even avoid altitude sickness altogether. No earaches or migraines, just a few brief moments of lurching discomfort on ascent and landing.
Less pleasant is the realization on reaching Copenhagen airport that despite their website’s claimed to the contrary, DNA’s data roaming refuses to work here, so I’ll have to find a local SIM card. I largely use my phone’s GPS and Google Maps to get around when travelling, but without data service this can mean a lot of awkward hopping from cafe to cafe in search of WiFi if I want to be able to navigate.
The only trouble of course here is that Denmark’s cell providers largely all require a national ID number in order to get even a prepaid SIM card. That leaves one of two options, Lebara and LycaMobile, the latter of which I’m warned has terrible data service. I end up buying one of the former from a very terse and slightly frustrated middle eastern man in a small shop near the central train station, but the whole difficulty again reminds me of that news story from that morning, and the little ways that countries make things difficult for foreigners.
This kind of subtle bureaucratic discrimination is long since familiar after 5 years as an immigrant in Finland. I recall how an Elisa rep once claimed he had to charge me a €300 deposit in order to open me an account, because “it’s the law”. Or how on a popular info site for expats, the links to the various cell phone providers in Finland were all grayed out with a message saying “this provider has informed us that users of this website do not fit their marketing profile.” Or even how it took me nearly 4 years to finally have complete online banking services, due to an ever rotating and often contradictory set of excuses involving my forms of identification, income, and residence status.
I’m staying at a hostel. 4 to a room. I wasn’t able to find a proper hotel room for under a 4-digit sum. I had thought at the time it must simply be the short notice, but I wonder if something is happening.
It’s only after getting into town and finally connecting the sheer number of rainbow flags everywhere that I realize I’ve come during pride week.
My internet problems solved, hostel found, I get my stuff settled and change my clothes. Because my passport and ID are still under my old name and gender, I generally stick to more masculine clothing when I’m flying to avoid any confusion or conflict. It’s hot though, and my shirt is already sticking to my back, so it’s out with the pants and in with the summer dress.
This little element of extra suffering to my day is another reminder of the little ways I pay for being “different”, and it’s with a sense of depressing inevitability that I realize after a bit of walkabout in town that for all the rainbow flags everywhere, Danes are just as versed in the Nordic Stare as Finns, and sometimes a lot less subtle about it. Just another price to pay, in a city already well known for being expensive at the best of times.
But here I am. I have arrived in Copenhagen, and there is nothing stopping me at last from doing the one thing I came here to do in the first place: go eat tacos at Hija de Sanchez. By fortune, my hostel is mere blocks from the original location, situated in the Kødbyen meat packing district.
When I arrive I am nervous, and initially chicken out and hover a bit. I’ve come a long way, and have a lot of hope riding on this being good, and my anxiety is nipping at my heels. Some confusion on my part about the menu options, a bit of chaos with the previous patrons’ order, and doubt creeps in the mind. “What if it’s not as good as all that?”
But even before I can get to the food, the atmosphere is already hitting the right strange note. It does seem a bit chaotic. The staff are clearly having a good, but hectic time, as it’s definitely busy and most of the patio seats are already packed. The decor is simple, even industrial, but not in that hipster mode of deliberately exposed ductwork, but in the lime green and white-tile walls that make it feel like what I want: a good hole-in-the-wall taqueria. You could drop this place just about anywhere in California and it would feel right at home, and I’m sure, Mexico too.
For my order, I am far too tired for decision making, so I go for the combo: one of each of the day’s taco options, to which I add a side of rice and beans, because how could I not?
First up is a cauliflower ceviche tostada. I have trepidations about this one. It’s clearly the vegetarian option of the day, and I’m not a big fan of cauliflower, but it makes an excellent starter. It’s bright, tangy, and suffers only from a structural failure in the tostada that nearly lands a mouthful of it in my lap.
Next is the most anticipated item: the al pastor.
Reader, I almost wept. It was perfect. Porky, crispy, seasoned exactly right, even the tortilla was a revelation. A wave of homesickness struck as I realized that the last time I’d had al pastor this good was in college, and then was struck with a strange sensation of relief as I realized that this was not nearly so far away as that is now. I was so moved that after I finished my meal I went back and ordered one more because I just had to have another.
The fish taco to follow is almost a blur now, save that I can say for sure that it was delicious. Fresh, crispy, crunchy, a perfect palate cleanser after the richness of the al pastor.
In between and finishing out the end were the rice and beans. The rice was a simple white long-grain, almost wild rice, seasoned with cilantro and onions so tender they melted in the mouth.
But the beans. Dear God alive, the beans. These were, no word of exaggeration or hyperbole, the best beans I have ever had in my life. Refried black beans with a light sprinkling of pungent cheese, and the kind of richness only good pork fat and expert cooking can produce, yet somehow not so heavy I couldn’t make room.
I should not have worried. A note on my Google Maps as I navigated to the taqueria on the way over says it was judged by some undefined entity to be among the best, possibly the best, Mexican food in Europe.
It is a deserved accolade. But there is more to come.
Day 2
Witness Me
I am adventurous about a great many things food, but not breakfast. I have a limited number of acceptable breakfast foods, and knowing I have a long day ahead, I want something at least resembling a proper fry-up.
So it’s off to Hyggesund, a breakfast spot owned by the Mikkeler brewery chain. I get waffles and fried eggs with bacon. The eggs come sunny-side up, the waffles with an ice-cold slab of butter and a dollop of tart rhubarb jam. It’s … OK. The eggs are rather good quality, the bacon a bit soft and over salty but still basically bacon, but the waffles are limp and give me the impression they’ve been made well in advance and re-warmed.
It will be soon forgotten however. Today is the day we will go to the Torvehallerne. But first, some sight-seeing.
My intended destination after breakfast is the famous Tivoli, but it seems I am up far too early for that. The Happiest Place on Earth apparently does not open until 11am, as is the case for several of the shops I’d intended to investigate. Stymied by my own impatience and the clarity of the Tivoli ticketing system, I wander further into town … and straight into a tourist trap.
They have a Ripley’s here, you see. And a Guinness World Record museum! I grew up reading those books as a kid, like probably every dumb kid of my generation. The town I lived in once even had its own Ripley’s-esque museum full mostly of random movie memorabilia and, if I recall correctly, a large collection of Elvis’ personal rhinestone stash.
So when the young man at the counter offered me a package deal of both of these, plus two other museums, of course I had to buy the tickets, right?
So in we go.
First entry is the Ripley’s museum itself, a exoticized spectacle of part tiki bar and part carnival sideshow, with a few brief funhouse tricks here and there. Following on from the giant jade coin at the entrance, we find scary looking tribal masks and weapons, bamboo walls, a torture room, collections of models and clothing built out of matchsticks and old toilet paper, random taxidermy, and a recurring character we will see again: a giant wax work of Robert Pershing Wadlow, the tallest man in medical history. It is cheesy, more than a little bit racist, but was at least a moment’s entertainment, which is more than I can say for what’s to come.
Immediately after the Ripley’s museum comes a Hans Christian Andersen museum. I say “a” here, rather than “the”, because of course the proper H.C. Andersen museum is in Odense, some distance from here. This “museum” is essentially a series of displays dedicated to his most famous stories, represented as cheaply constructed sets paired with shortened translations of the text. Beyond the cheapness and lack of almost any actual artifacts of the man, though, the most depressing element is the stories themselves. Stripped of any artistic flourish, it becomes nakedly plain just how mortally depressing the man’s stories actually are, to the extent that at some point I stopped reading them for my mental health’s sake.
Yet still, at this point, I hadn’t caught on to the grift. Next comes a long death march through the tourist district until we finally reach the Guinness World Records museum, and it’s here I start to realize I’ve been conned.
Much like the Andersen “museum,” there are almost no actual exhibits or artifacts in the Guinness museum. It’s simple a series of themed rooms and a few interactive exhibits, where you’re shown what a record was, and a picture or video or obvious forgery vaguely related to it. The only real highlight of the museum you can see without even entering: our old friend Robert Wadlow is back, and this time he’s animatronic … when it works. It takes a group of kids several minutes to get him to register their presence and stand up.
The final attraction I will not even dare describe as a museum even in scare quotes. The “Mystic Exploratorie” (sic) is a cheap carnival scare house. The haunted house your local high school puts up for Halloween is probably both more frightening, and also I might add, considerably longer, than this back alley room with a couple cheap jump scares and little else to it. As I enter, one man even gets screwed out of his entrance token when the gate malfunctions.
He was the lucky one here.
I am reminded of nothing so much as Gravity Falls’ infamous “Mystery Shack”, except that even Grunkle Stan at least had a sense of showmanship.
The day is getting on now, and breakfast is slipping into memory, so eventual destination grows more and more urgent. It is time to make our way to Torvehallerne. A few distractions slow my path, of course. There’s a brief stop in a rather sparse manga shop, a walk through a park, and then, just around the corner from my destination I find the Workers Museum.
I very much enjoy museums for the visual experience of it. There’s few places other than museums where you can simply browse new sights, and in such variety. I will wander slowly through, as if grazing on visual stimuli, and then if something takes my fancy or interest I’ll stop and take a closer look. If it’s a museum on a subject that I’m particularly interested in, I’ll naturally take more time, soaking in plaques and interactive exhibits with enthusiasm.
In this respect, the Worker’s Museum should be right up my alley. It is very much a visual experience, walking through rooms constructed to simulate the life and experience of the working class at various points of 20th century Danish history. Humble living rooms, kitchens with wood fires, factory workstations from the days of hand-sewn clothes up through the assembly of a Bang & Olufsen CD player.
Further, the heart of the museum should be one close to mine. It is constructed around the oldest Worker’s Assembly Hall in Europe, and the main stunner is the hall itself, festooned still with vintage red banners. A later exhibit, sadly all in Danish, sings the praises of the Danish social insurance system.
Yet there’s a curious conflict to the place: very little of it seems to acknowledge the socialist roots of the place, and the few moments where it is admitted to are so singular as to standout by their absence everywhere else. The gift shop sells various tchotchkes decorated with familiar socialist and communist slogans, yet almost all absent the otherwise expected iconography save for a maybe a red color scheme. A room dedicated to one of the party’s founders plays “The Internationale”, but otherwise makes little reference to socialist history.
However the most notable illustration of this curious revisionism lies in a tiny courtyard attached to the gift shop. Here, amidst a couple of cafe tables, stands a statue of V.I. Lenin. A plaque just inside from the door explains that Mr. Lenin was donated to the museum, and explains that merely displaying him at all in this out of the way location was a source of substantial controversy. As if to illustrate this further, a nearby hallway leading to the toilets contains a small collection of posters of Lenin, the only such communist art I would see the entire visit.
The Danes, it seems, are not especially proud of their red history, even as they remain very proud of its fruits.
It is however, to their credit, at least a lesser case of such revisionism than the Lenin Museum in Tampere, Finland, which after years as a pretty staid biographical walkthrough of the man’s life, was suddenly and dramatically renovated to consist largely of a series of experiential displays intended to illustrate how awful life was under Soviet Communism.
Lenin’s grave at this point may be the real secret of Russia’s energy policy.
When food lovers die, they will not go to Valhalla. They will go to Torvehallerne.
I love a good market hall. When I still lived in Tampere I would sometimes detour just to walk around the Kauppahalli, just to take in the sights. I ate almost daily at Hietalahti hall during a previous job, and the salmon in Hakaniemi is among the best I’ve ever had. One of my fondest early food memories is of our nanny sneaking us kids off to the 5th St. Market in Eugene. What could be better in the world than a whole building dedicated to the best of food?
And yet still, I was not prepared for Torvehallerne.
Where most market halls are expressions of tradition in a sense, Torvehallerne strikes one as a wholly new and revitalized take. Re-established in 2011 on the site of a former market square that had been closed since 1958, Torvehallerne feels very much the modernist, upscale re-imagining of the market hall. The two halls are clad in glass and steel but with open walls looking towards each other through an open-air square in the middle teeming with garden stalls. The market feels bright, open, and freeing, more like a pair of huge glass tents than solid structures. You are encouraged by the very architecture to explore and settle wherever you like.
And what wonders to explore … every booth brings some new exciting color, some intoxicating aroma, some tempting morsel of food, some stunningly fresh or rare ingredient. Oh my god, look at all those oysters! Is that smoked eel? There’s a stall where you can bottle your own craft gin. A cafe entirely dedicated to clever takes on savory porridges. And holy shit, is that blue-footed chicken?
It is nearly enough to overwhelm a girl. I can’t begin to decide where to start, and every new sight and smell shatters any attempt to build up towards a decision.
So I cheat: I go back to Hija de Sanchez. They’ve a location here too, their second, and today’s menu bears barbacoa. So it’ll be two of those and a Jarritos, please. And yes, they were bloody delicious. Tender, dripping, porky majesty on a tortilla.
Then as I’m passing back through to take stock of my options I bump into Brazaria, offering some gorgeous looking empanadas, so of course I have to have one. I order a beef empanada, with salsa of course, and sit down expecting a simple meat pie and am instead blown away by an explosion of different flavors. Beef sure, but also peppers, veggies, a boiled egg, olives, and a burst of broth. It was easily one of the best meat pies I’ve had in years.
I’m not done yet though. My stomach is filling up but I remember those oysters, and I want them. I want them bad. I head to Fiskerikajen and inquire with the excellently knowledgable fishmonger on a small sampling of three oyster varieties, all of them flawless and fresh (my favorite was the Romigos Speciales, but honestly, trust the man. The man knows his oysters.)
I’m scouting around to finish my market crawl with some dessert, and again get distracted and change my plans when I find some honest to god fresh fried pork rinds at Lund, and instead settle down for a nice brown ale at Omegn. There’s simply no room left for more than that, and I don’t want to spoil my dinner.
If I’m to earn my place in the Torvehallerne in battle with a truly challenging meal, then there is probably no better place to go down swinging than Warpigs.
I hadn’t even planned to eat here, I’d intended to go to an izakaya I’d heard good things about … but I went hunting for bars in the neighborhood and I heard the call of battle.
Warpigs, you see, is a brewpub, partnered with the ever-present Mikkeler as well as 3 Floyds Brewing, but more importantly it is also one massive barbecue joint.
Real barbecue in the heart of the meatpacking district, serving up Texas-style brisket and pork shoulder, with all the trimmings you expect, slow-cooked in what I’m informed is Europe’s largest smoker by American chef to the rock world, Andrew Hroza.
They have hush puppies.
I repeat.
THEY HAVE HUSH PUPPIES.
On seeing those words my brain and stomach both essentially went on autopilot for the next several hours. As someone who had to resort to learning how to make her own barbecue just to get the stuff even when I lived back in the states, it seems I kind of lose all self-control when faced with the counter of a real barbecue joint.
Which is how I found myself sitting alone at a table in Warpigs, 60€ poorer, and staring at what was easily more than two full kilograms of food. ½ pound each of brisket and pork shoulder, a “small” side of mac and cheese (that probably could’ve been a meal in itself), essentially an entire jar of dill pickles, and a side of enormous hush puppies with pimento cheese. With of course, Carolina mustard sauce for the pork, and an excellent Texas-style sauce made with a housemade Lambic, cranberries, and chili. And to wash it all down, a Mikkeler ale of some description that escapes my fat-addled memory other than it was brown.
It was a truly apocalyptic amount of food, all of it excellent. The mac and cheese was the “weakest” of the sides, which is to say of course it was simple stove-top style, but still creamy magic with a hint of pepper. The hush puppies were huge, nearly the size of limes, salty, and excellent when spread with a bit of the cheese. The dill pickles were exactly what you want a truly great dill pickle to taste like, as was that Carolina-style pork and sauce.
But the brisket. Sweet God, the brisket.
The brisket was so good it was exhausting. Rich, tender, smoky, bursting with flavor from the dry rub and that perfectly tangy hit of sauce. Every bite is like being punched in the mouth, and I find myself having to take a breath after each mouthful.
I fought hard, gentle readers. It was a mighty struggle, and too my credit, I did make it through the meat, save for a few scraps of the pork. I simply couldn’t leave that table without every trace of that brisket being in my belly.
By the end however, bloated, sweating, breathing heavily, and still staring at a seemingly bottomless supply of sides, I was defeated.
I live, I die, I live again.
Witness me.
Day 3
Welcome Home
I am, unaccountably, up early the next morning, but it’s easily at least 11am before I can even fathom the idea of leaving the hotel, let alone consuming anything. I am still inflated with smoked meats, and so forgo any idea of breakfast entirely. I need time to recover, a happy place, where I can walk off the lingering lard layer around my organs and nervous system.
It is time to go to Tivoli.
I don’t really know what I expected of Tivoli. I knew it only by reputation, and one brief segment of an old episode of Parts Unknown where Tony takes the famously taciturn René Redzepi for an afternoon of fun. (Fun detail, If you watch that episode closely, you might spot a cameo of sorts from the very chef who inspired this trip.) Maybe just some Old World-y Baroque carnival sort of thing, and hopefully something tasty and sweet to eat.
I hope then, that the reader will forgive me for being stunned instead to walk through the gates to discover the most stunning monument to Orientalism I have ever personally witnessed. Just to the right of the entrance stands an ornate Chinese theater with a mechanical curtain in the shape of a peacock. A few steps further, and I’m faced with a massive “Moorish” palace, topped with minarets, and whose lawn is incongruously groomed by an autonomous robot. A later section of the park is done up as Chinatown in microcosm, inexplicably full of hot dog and hamburger stalls, and a roller coaster called, of course, the Dragon.
There is, of course, a pagoda. It plays host to a location of a regional sushi chain. The very name of the place even takes a note of appropriation: “Tivoli” refers to a famous garden in Paris, which itself was named for a city in Italy.
In the episode, Redzepi describes Tivoli as “the place where happiness comes from.” Meandering through all the little Potemkin villages however, there is another apocryphal quote that comes to mind from the morning’s research. It is claimed that the park’s founder was able to secure permission from the king to build it by claiming that “when the people are amusing themselves, they do not think about politics.”
Perhaps he is right. Why worry? Why think, even, that anything could be better? One need not even travel, after all, when you can see “the Orient” in miniature right in the middle of town. But I can’t help feel it’s a bit absurd to see a massive Arabic palace hotel standing in the same country that seems so currently hostile to actual Arabic people.
Eventually, after a circling of the park and a descent into the disappointingly small aquarium, my feet have become tired and my stomach at last calls for at least a bit of something to put in it.
Tivoli is awash with eateries of every description, from theme restaurants to hot dog stands, but my readings tell me that perhaps the best spot in the park to finally get something actually Danish on my trip is Grøften. I am, after all, in Denmark, and I have been repeatedly told that when one is in Denmark, one is mandated by Danish law to eat smørrebrod.
I spring for the fjord shrimps, and the smoked eel. The shrimps are strongly flavored little things, best with the rye bread and butter, but the smoked eel was simple elegance. Served with scrambled egg and chives, it is hearty, smoky, rich, and wonderful.
It was a good lunch, well prepared, though the size of the bill came as a bit of a shock. When later rewatching that Parts Unknown in research for this piece, I do however take a small note of pride that when Tony and René came to Tivoli they ate the same meal I did: fjord shrimps and smoked eel at Grøften.
In its own way, it’s a kind of accidental tribute to my late hero. I did not even remember where he ate when he came here at the time. But I can say that it’s probably partly due to his influence that I became the kind of person who would look at a menu and see smoked eel and think “oh I have got to have me some of that.”
There is a thing authors do sometimes, where they drop down to a lower register, affect a more personal tone, and make some grand admission to the reader about the present state of affairs in the narrative or the writing process so far. It’s a trick of sorts: the writer gets a loophole out of a tricky spot in the text, and the reader is endeared to the writer because they feel like they’ve been let in on a secret and thus don’t mind the momentarily inartful ploy. I’m about to do this now, so I wanted to give you a warning, because I never like to feel like I’m getting away with something.
My admission is this: I have no idea how to write about my experience at Sanchez.
I have written and deleted countless opening paragraphs now. Paragraphs about scrambling in the dark for my credit card at 3 in the morning to confirm the reservation email. About my honest trepidation and nerves about coming here, or the amusing anecdote about why I arrived an hour early for my reservation. Staid opening remarks about chef Rosio Sanchez’ background at the revered “best restaurant in the world” Noma, linking it to my day spent walking in the shoes of her former boss and my late hero at Tivoli. Spluttering, effusive paragraphs aiming to build this scene in our little travelogue to a shuddering climax.
But the truth is, it all feels unseemly somehow. My evening at Sanchez feels, in a probably naive sense, almost too personal to break down in dish-by-dish review form. I can’t be that objective. It’s like trying to give a Yelp review of an old girlfriend. A thoroughly perverse experience, that seems like it would be inevitably meaningless to anyone but myself.
And yet, I must. Because the honest and simple truth is that Sanchez is the single best Mexican restaurant I have ever eaten at.
It was, in fact, quite possibly one of the greatest meals of my life. Every moment of my visit was a pure delight, and not just because of the food, which was of course, exquisite. It reminded me of everything I ever loved about food, about the restaurant life, even, in a very real way, what I loved and still sometimes miss about my home land.
When I think about American food, I do not think about hamburgers and hot dogs and pizza, as seems to be the only image of “American food” that exists in European minds. I think about Midwestern casseroles and “Lutheran binder”, I think about Cajun and Creole food, I think about barbecue, but most importantly of all, I think about immigrant food. German, Italian, Irish, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, on and on, but almost more than just about any other as a kid born and raised on the West Coast, I think about Mexican food.
I remember my Dad coming home raving about his first experience at the little family-run taqueria near his office. I remember surviving many a shift in my broke-ass days as a cook on $3 bean and cheese burritos, and those rare moments I had the scratch to upgrade to the chile rellenos. I remember the explosion in my brain the first time my best friend who’d lived in Mexico introduced me to mole poblano, and I remember the two of us driving more than half an hour to the next town to eat cabeza tacos and menudo at the little corner stall inside the Mexican supermarket with the giant pig out front. These were formative experiences in my whole perspective on food and what makes food great, memories that shaped my palate indelibly, and they are the first thing that springs to mind when people ask me what I miss about my home country after living in Finland for so many years.
The experience of eating at Sanchez was more than just a great meal. Sanchez’ food is elemental, one concentrated burst after another of the very flavors by which I came to define “good food”, flavors that evoke everything from nostalgia to homesickness to overwhelming joy, each executed with absolute precision.
I tell no word of a lie, though I feel as if it will sound like I am pushing things too far, to say there were moments I teared up. It all sounds like absurd hyperbole, written down this way.
Can you see how I am compromised here?
And then comes the atmosphere and the experience of the thing.
I arrive, as said, an hour early to my reservation, and to my pleasant surprise am greeted by Chef Sanchez herself, who happily accepts my early arrival and seats me at a bar seat overlooking the entire open kitchen. Sanchez brings me homemade chips and salsa and recommends the mezcal margarita to start me off with drinks, a suggestion I happily accepted, and you would be wise to as well. It is an excellent margarita.
Much as the Hija de Sanchez taquerias evoke so many humble little taco stands and hole-in-the-wall spots back home, Sanchez the restaurant somehow evokes the feel of a modernist cantina. Grey stone and concrete replace the stucco and faux adobe of so many family joints back home, but the wooden tabletops and decorative touches like potted cacti, thick ceramic dishware, and bowls of fresh peppers and limes make it feel homey, like I’ve walked into the cover of a New Mexican cookbook.
From my vantage point at the bar, I can readily watch all the action of the kitchen, watch each dish being assembled, hear the expediter call out orders and the banter of the crew, banter which, to my absolute joy I even find myself becoming a small part of. Soon I’m sharing stories of blisteringly hot kitchens with the sous chef, and even a sympathetic laugh with Sanchez herself as the dreaded lull before the 8 o’clock rush strikes and the dread of “did I prep enough” sets in. I mention where I live to one of the chefs and she calls over the waitress, who turns out to be from Finland herself, and we commiserate about homesickness and the gap between Mexican food in Finland, and here.
I feel, vicariously, as if I’m back in the kitchen myself, recalling my ten years in and out of mostly Asian restaurants across what passed for a Central Oregon restaurant scene. Memories that, if not exactly “happy”, at least remind me a time when my working life was a lot simpler that it is today: orders come in, orders go out, at the end of the night you’ve survived, and you all head to the bar to blow off the steam of an evening’s rush with a few beers.
But also there is something different about this kitchen: everyone knows what to do, everyone is quick on the draw, but there’s none of either the military drill of the brigade, or the macho profanity and bluster, even when the heat is on. Sanchez’ crew are helpful, supportive, even cheerful, even as the heat starts to set in as the rush begins. I can’t help but wonder if part of this is down to the fact that, unlike most kitchens I ever worked, half the cooks here, if not more, are women.
One thing is certain though: here in this town where the uncomfortable spectre of racism has somehow seemed to haunt the corners of my vision everywhere I look, where the Nordic Stare and worse has often followed me through rooms and streets, I have been given the best welcome of my entire trip by this mixed crew of immigrants and natives where the language freely leaps from English to Spanish to Danish and back again.
And yeah: the food is goddamned good. It is hard to write about though, because it is on paper so simple, yet so precisely executed that the sum of the thing is far more than a simple recounting of ingredients would suggest. At once instantly familiar, yet brand new. I feel like I cannot do it justice. Simply describing what it is belies how damn perfect each dish was, how precisely executed.
A single fresh oyster with lime juice and jalapeno is the perfect start, waking up my palate with a jolt. The second course, a cold soup of scallop, agua de chile, and fresh berries is beautifully balanced, sweet, salty, sour, and spicy all at once.
A hot soup comes next, black bean soup with a single tiny quesadilla and charred and salted greens, reminding me again of those incredible beans at Hija, hearty and rich while perfectly soothing a palate now seared by the previous soup’s spice.
Course number four is almost the hardest to explain: it is a simple mushroom tamale, cooked in a banana leaf, served with cheese, crema, and salsa. There is an amusing exchange as my waitress attempts to explain to me what a tamale is, but no explanation is necessary. I’ve been here before, and I am overjoyed to be here again. It is one fantastic damned tamale, almost custard-like in texture, taking me instantly to a very happy place.
The final course is a taco, but what a taco. Carne asada, with a red salsa and scallion, served on a “tortilla” cut from a single leaf of steamed and grilled Savoy cabbage. It is a challenge to eat, the cabbage is tough to get through without injury from the heat of it, but the flavor is intensely delicious. The effect is like trying to rapidly contain a grenade with the mouth, but I have no qualms with scraping up the shrapnel when it’s all over.
For dessert, I pass on the famous paletas for a churro sandwich with ice cream and whipped cream. I wind up as well sticking around for another of those excellent margaritas and am easily talked into an equally perfect negroni to finish the evening. I feel so at home here I don’t want to leave, but the 8 o’clock rush is coming, and so is the buzz from that negroni. I decide it’s best I move on before I overstay my welcome, though not before convincing the Danish man at the bar next to me that yes, he really wants to do the full course menu. How could I not?
So reader, do you see? This is easily the best restaurant experience I’ve ever had in my life, and yet can I truly say that you will have the same experience? Without the weight of all that memory and emotion behind it, will it even mean the same to you?
But maybe, instead, it can be the formative experience, the start of your own love affair with a cuisine that is sorely underrepresented in this part of the world. Perhaps this could be for you the meal that will do for you what that little taqueria did for me and my father lo these many years ago. I can certainly think of no better introduction to one of the world’s greatest cuisines.
You’re certainly not gonna get this at Pancho Villa.
Full, happy, and a bit tipsy, I ended the night by retiring to Vela, a cozy one-room lesbian bar on Victoriagade. Vela has the decor of the kind of bar I love, lots of dark wood and low light, but the music is loud, and while the bartender gives me a friendly welcome, no one else seems particularly interested in the weird trans girl in the corner. Everyone is coupled off or knows each other already, and I’m too shy to intrude in any case. After a beer and a ginger ale to calm my stomach, I retire to my hotel in a somewhat somber mood.
Day 4
Comedown
The hotel has a relatively early checkout, and since its automatic I need to be out of the room by 11, or else get locked out. This proves no problem however, as still buzzing from the night before I only manage to sleep until 7.
I escape the hotel early, and dawdle about town for a bit. I decide to try Copenhagen’s sole Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, remembering with joy the Dunkin breakfasts I’d had in Berlin some months before, but am disappointed to find it the only truly mediocre thing I consumed in my entire trip. Someone at the Copenhagen franchise needs to have a chat with the Germans.
I decide however that I have time before my afternoon flight to find a good lunch, and there’s only one thing on my mind: hot dogs.
Danish hot dogs are legendary, and standing at their peak is the widely regarded “best hot dog in Copenhagen”, Johns Hot Dog Deli. John’s all organic dogs have earned it considerable praise, and while these days it has growing competition, none of that competition are as close to my home base. I have a garlic-bacon dog with all the sauces, plus pickled red onion and Jerusalem artichoke from the self-serve topping bar.
It’s a damn good hot dog, but I’ve still got room for one more stop: John’s is right around the corner from the first meal of the trip, and I cannot resist closing the loop by stopping at Hija de Sanchez for one more of those excellent al pastor tacos.
It is as good as ever, of course. It takes a moment of willpower to leave, but I must.
The flight is uneventful. I arrive too early, and so while away the time with a lovely chocolate bun and some Netflix, a bit too tired and wistful yet to concentrate much. The descent into Helsinki is a little more painful than the leaving, but still well below my usual and I avoid any altitude sickness once more.
Getting out of Helsinki airport is always somewhat exhausting, and by now I’m sweating bullets from the confined clothes and the humidity, and so while it’s closing on dinner time by the time I get back, I decide I’d really just rather go home.
I stop off in the K-Market below my apartment and grab a few groceries, and for a snack, a giant apple-stuffed donut. I make my way upstairs, toss down my bags, give some much needed love to the cat, strip out of my sweaty clothes, and collapse exhausted at my desk with my donut.
I take a bite, and glance down at my snack with consternation.
I take another bite, and another, and another.
Finally, as the massive donut is almost entirely consumed, in one last corner, I find a single tablespoon’s worth of apple jam.
Welcome home.
