La Banchina — Restaurant in Copenhagen Municipality

The food was alright but the most rude service I have ever experienced.

We were having a normal dinner conversation but were told numerous times to lower our voice in the most impolite and aggressive manner and got accused of the following:

1). Playing YouTube videos (!?). I was showing a video of my 1 year old daughter who just learned to walk to my two friends at the table. The waiter grabbed my hand like a strict kindergarten teacher and told me to close it immediately.

2). Then we got told not to mess with the light. Kind of hard not to do anything when the lights goes on and off and is not aligned with the table so you end up with a sharp LED light right in your face.

3). Then we got blaimed for taking a pee at their front door (!?). We had a wine menu with plenty of water on the side, so one of my friends decided to go outside (away from restaurant territory) and pee in a remote area. This was apparently worse than having to wet his pants due to too few toilets and 30 mins waiting time.

4). When we were to pay, we said in a polite and civil manner, that we felt mistreated. The waiter summed up everything above and spoke down to us like we were three toddlers out in town for the first time.

The price for all this: 5.000 kr and the worst dining experience ever. This was the first time any of us had experienced anything like this, so we all left in chock.

For La Banchina:

If you do not want people to show photos/videos of their loved ones move to an even more remote area still waiting for 4G and smart phones.

If you do not want to have guests' fickle with the light then fix it and buy a dimmer to make it less hospital like.

If you do not want people to take a pee outside then make another toilet or perhaps two while you are at it.

If you do not want people to chat and have a good time, then do not serve a wine menu with 8 servings. Perhaps focus on funerals instead.

Now I look forward to getting an answer back, which I guess will be as just aggressive and hostile as my experience...

Ruined our day.. 😞 My daughter had been to sauna at La Banchina a few times before, and she really liked it, but it seems that recently, all their sauna bookings have become the “shared experience” for what appeared to be the price of a private sauna booking 6 months ago. She booked it for us, so that we could sit and relax in a private setting and go for a dip in the canal if we felt like it. Unfortunately, she did miss the fact that the sauna now must be shared with others.. when we came, I saw a 4x2 “sauna-barrel” packed to the limit with sweaty people (as you can imagine the atmosphere when you are sharing a small space like that with another 6 sweating strangers!), 1 toilet that is also offered to about 60 people as a change room, and an overcrowded deck for getting into the canal. This was NOT what either of us expected.. My daughter was extremely upset and I could not use the service. Yes, she booked it when she was busy and missed the fact that the offered experience had changed since she was there last time, but because the price seemed the same eg a private sauna booking she was not alarmed at the time. We decided not to waste half an hour of our paid time “in a sauna” by standing in the toilet queue to change or by trying to squeeze ourselves in between strangers in a hot barrel, and walked away. My daughter lost her money and the whole thing was so upsetting that it really did ruin the day for us. Be aware of this service offer and the questionable quality of service if you decide to pay for...

What can I say—my first trip to Copenhagen, here making art, film, and discovering things I didn’t know I needed. My good friend Andreas from Elk Films pointed me toward La Banchina, a little place tucked by the water with a hand-scrawled menu on the glass. Simple. Honest. Pure like breeze.

And what do you say when simplicity hits you like a thousand longboats?

There happened to be one mackerel left—grilled to quiet perfection, touched with a salsa just shy of sin (I’m Mexican, so heat is a birthright, not a preference). The structure of it—beautiful. Oysters, ocean crispy fresh. A chilled red wine that didn’t care about rules. And then the sunset is arriving, with birds skimming the water like a Nordic omen.

The waiter looked at me and just knew—that I’d love that mackerel more than Odin or Thor ever could.

Thank you, La Banchina.

Thank you for a Valhallaean moment: the wind, the water ripples, the scent, the tiny bird bathing in a puddle of soil and light like it had just listened to Bach for the first time.

If you don’t get this, maybe don’t come.

But if you do—if you’re part of my tribe of sounds that taste and scent that sings… then come

And thank all the gods. Because only they could’ve conjured a...