Aamanns 1921 — Restaurant in Copenhagen Municipality

The only reason I am writing now is the owner replied to my very appropriate one star review. Full story is as follows.

Short Version: If you go here I highly recommend that you wear formal attire and make a reservation. Other reviewers have commented that the staff is rather rude, I'd bet that it was because you weren't dressed well enough.

Long Version: A Michelin Star is a great accomplishment, no doubt about that. That is the reason we tried to eat here. That said, a Michelin Star was recently earned by a taco stand. Not a taco restaurant or even a taco food truck, but a taco stand.

With humility and respect for that taco stand, I wouldn't wear formal attire to dine there. It would seem out of place. I also wouldn't wear formal attire to get a hot dog, a cheese burger, barbeque, or a sandwich; even if it was an open faced sandwich.

I could not find a mention on the website that a reservation was required, so I didn't make one, which is a mistake. And I was wearing casual attire, which is also a mistake. There were three tables seated, the rest of the restaurant was empty and I asked the girl if there was an open table. She said 'let me check with the manager. The manager came over, looked at me with disgust (and maybe hatred), and walked away without saying a word. The girl then said, 'sorry, fully booked'.

They were not fully booked, Google Maps said all night long that they were less busy than normal on it's website.

Your staff can absolutely treat people like dog excreta on the sidewalk, and those people can absolutely leave accurate and truthful reviews of your restaurant.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself how much different this interaction would have been if the manager said, "Sorry, we have a dress code and you are not dressed appropriately. I recommend making a reservation and returning later." How hard would that have been to treat a human as if they were human?

And for everyone else; Dress well and make a reservation. This might be a great restaurant if you do that. If you dress casually and don't have a reservation, you will know what it is like to be seen and treated as...

Completed disappointment

We came here because of the many positive reviews, but we cannot understand where they come from. It started with an awful user experience with the restaurant’s website: not with a phone nor with an ipad it was posssible to make it work somewhat decently - but okay, it is just a website. The issue is that we checked the menu for dinner only to find out that it didn’t match at all with the card that was presented to us in the restaurant. Zero overlap. When we pointed this out to the waitress, she just said we had made a mistake and had looked at the lunch menu. We had not. In a place like this, for that price, we would expect an online menu to be up to date, otherwise why put it there in the first place. Furthermore, in the online version it showed that it was possible to choose between two options per course, whereas the actual menu was fixed and it was not possible to make any change. Also, the vegetarian option that swapped duck, halibut, and an oyster for beet, cauliflower and cheese sauce cost exactly the same. So we started badly, but it got worse: the service was super slow and we had to wait one hour to get the appetizers. The waitress apologised for the waiting, but then we also had to wait very long to get the main courses. We were hoping it would save the evening but it didn’t: the duck was massively overcooked - just don’t cook it if you cannot, stick to herrings. The cauliflower, in turn, was hard. The sides consisted of kale that smelled and tasted extremely of grill smoke - don’t know what went wrong there in the kitchen. The cauliflower just had a lemony sauce. We had sweet-glazed potatoes to accompany both dishes. They weren’t our taste but at least they were cooked properly. At this point we were just completely frustrated, explained the situation to the waitress and just asked to take the deserts out of the bill and leave. The maitre came by and proceed to ask us if we enjoyed the food. Really? We showed our disappointment but he just shrugged. We never had such a disappointing experience before: without deserts we still spent 125 euros and got...

Ah, where to start. Recommendation from friends in the city. High expectations. Great start.

The place is beautiful and the staff initially very attentive. Both myself and my partner had opted for water and the 'local' IPA. The IPA was actually incredible. Really well balanced with sweetness and body. The water was agreeably refreshing.

We'd opted for the pickled herring and one of shrimp starters. I'll be honest, the herring was unreal. Like so much flavour and so well balanced with the flavours. The shrimp (prawn) dish was just okay. A bit samey, and perhaps reflecting an all time British classic, the prawn cocktail... Just lacking the charm.

The follow up course introduced the steak tartare and th butter fried plaice into the mix. On the flip side, the tartare failed to impress on this occasion, massively under-seasoned and very disappointing. The plaice on the other side was really an easy eat. The roumalade was so yummy.

I'm sure at this moment, you're wondering what went wrong?! This is a Michelin recommended restaurant. Therefore the expectations are raised somewhat high. The food was good. In particular the herring and plaice. But it ultimately fell apart with the staff and a few really disappointing dishes went amiss.

We'd originally gone for the 3-course lunch, but the first two courses filled me so much, dessert was such a pipe-dream, it's unreal. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to expect that my request to adjust from the 3-course to a few individual courses. No no no. We'd been given the incorrect bill, which was followed by a very grumpy adjustment and coldness on paying up.

I hate doing this, but this particular experience was rough, given how much we paid, the expected exceptional service and the little interest on our experience at the end of the meal. We've had lots of great experiences in Copenhagen, but sadly this...