Restaurant Hærværk — Restaurant in Aarhus Municipality

I feel so conflicted about this place. On one hand, the concept is delightful: the menu can vary on a day-to-day basis, depending on what ingredients they get. The menu is a surprise-- you don't get to choose beforehand. They focus on sustainability and low-waste food. The food itself is delicious, although it's the bite-sized food you can expect from such gourmet restaurants. Still you'll savor every bite. The wine choice was fascinating: I've never tasted such delicious and unconventional wines. Every dish and every glass came with a story of how it was sourced, and who produced it. Incredible.

All of this is the reason for my conflict. This amazing restaurant kept building up delicious entrée after delicious entrée, and then the main dish was a huge disappointment. At least, it was for me-- my meat-eater colleagues probably got a great bang for their buck. This restaurant fell into the same tired old lazy trope of making the vegetarian dish the same as the meat dish, just without the meat. My friends got what looked like a delicious meat cut, meatballs, and gravy with a quarter of roasted cabbage. Me? I just got a bigger chunk of cabbage in a cheese sauce. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty good. But for a restaurant of this calibre, this price point, which boasts its Michelin stickers all over the restroom, it's extremely lazy, and honestly goes against its claims to sustainability. Vegetarian food is better for the environment than any meat source, regardless of how organic and local the cows are. Betraying the main vegetarian dish like that is way below what's expected of a place like this.

So that's my conflict. On one hand, great concept, great food. On the other hand, the vegetarian dish is lazy and felt like the only thought behind it was "oh crap we have to have a veggie alternative, I guess they like cabbage right? Yeah more cabbage for them then".

The dessert was really damn...

What an incredible culinary journey.

You’re welcomed to the restaurant with a full explanation of their sustainability initiatives and surprise 5-course menu. The courses change regularly, but our were: the snacks, beef tartare, white asparagus, cod cake, wagyu beef, rubarb desert.

All of the dishes were extremely unique and well described by our servers. Highlights for me included the mini hot dog included in the snack, the beef tartare which was creamy and tender, and the wagyu beef which melted in your mouth.

The wine pairing was also fantastic and I would highly recommend it. The servers were VERY generous with their continuous pours throughout the night which was greatly appreciated.

Lastly, all the servers were super kind and informative. It’s no surprise this restaurant has a Michelin green star and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a...

Excellent food options in Aarhus and surprised that it was better than CPH on most levels, but less variety.

Haervaerk was no exception. Great tasting menu of whatever is at the market (yes, no menu so be prepared). All in all, the price was well worth the experience.

Dishes started off strong and by the end we were neutral from too much upfront sensory overload. Dish 5 for me was unnecessary and dessert, although included, was not appetizing at all. I would have preferred to stay with seafood the entire night instead of steering off course (July 23, 2019), but the staff was pleasant and attentive and would normally give a 5 star for this experience, but I love dessert and the fruit/meringue dessert wasn't...