Smørrebrød at a Traditional Danish Frokost Restaurant

The Danish smørrebrød — open-faced rye bread with elaborate toppings — is one of Scandinavia's great culinary traditions, and the lunch restaurants (frokoststeder) of Copenhagen that serve it formally are unlike anything else in Europe. You sit at a white-clothed table at midday, order a sequence of four or five smørrebrød from a printed card, and eat them in the prescribed order with ice-cold Danish beer (typically a Carlsberg or Tuborg pilsner) and aquavit chasers.

The toppings are the art: herring in multiple preparations (pickled, smoked, curried) on dark rye; roast beef with crispy onions and grated horseradish; cured salmon with dill mayonnaise and cucumber; liver pate with bacon and pickled beets; smoked eel with scrambled egg and chives. Each one is constructed on the bread as a considered architectural arrangement. The bread is dense, slightly sour Danish rugbrod (rye bread) that holds the toppings without softening.

The great smørrebrød restaurants of Copenhagen — Schonnemann (founded 1877), Aamanns, Restaurant Kronborg — are lunching institutions. Schonnemann in particular is a landmark: dark wood, old photographs, the same menu it has offered for decades, and a clientele of businessmen, professors, and market workers eating in benign parallel. Lunch runs from noon to about three. There is no dinner service. Order the snaps (aquavit) without hesitation.