The Samuel

Jonathan Berntsen has many years of experience running excellent restaurants. From the youthfully wild Berntsen’s Ballade to the highly acclaimed Clou, Berntsen has steered his kitchen with a confident hand, serving exactly the food he personally considers the very best. Here, the ingredients are top-quality, and they can certainly be imported if that makes the most sense. Berntsen is attentive to design, but now the style is pleasantly simpler and the flavors far more refined and nuanced. His best dishes have been carried over from previous ventures, but The Samuel is a completely new dining establishment with grand ambitions, located in a villa near Hellerup Station. We are shown up to our table on the first floor, where everyone is seated and dining. Our fantastic sommelier and hostess throughout the evening, Pernille Malec, who previously worked at places like The Paul and AOC, creates anticipation, joy, and a warm sense of hospitality around us. There is a single menu featuring five snacks, nine courses, and a small sweet treat with coffee, along with the option to purchase a 10-glass wine pairing, water, and coffee for a total of 3,700 DKK. We’re clearly operating at a high level, and it delivers! Often, the menu is crafted around which wines Berntsen wants guests to taste, featuring beautiful, often quite old bottles with great character that are refreshingly different from most wines. Yet Berntsen also keeps his finger on the pulse of trends, serving La Garmén oysters (a small “mother” oyster with a firm texture from Normandy) paired respectively with apple and then his signature combination of ginger and passion fruit. There’s a reason it has become so popular, as it truly awakens the palate, even for the golden, nutty drops of Guy Michel Champagne, Millésime 1998. Pickled sea urchin, geléed beach crab bisque, and hand-picked scallops serve as the playground that opens the evening. Afterward, we move on to the actual nine courses, which are simultaneously simple and so creative that we wouldn’t have come up with the ideas ourselves. Except for the cod with an overly robust bisque and caviar that gets “drowned out,” every dish is perfection and great flavor. There are many favorites, but especially the more ethically produced foie gras, seared with nanosecond precision and placed on fresh raspberries with a light glaze, so neither sweetness nor umami dominates, is a dream that is crisp and daringly paired with a glass of 1996 Burgundy from Camille Giroud, Aloxe-Corton, Les Vercots, 1er Cru from Côte de Beaune. It’s also a delight to get up and go downstairs to the large cheese cabinet to choose cheeses. Berntsen has a great passion—also for cheese—and here there is only the best of the best. For dessert, we gladly experience his old love for design, which reaches its crescendo in the chocolate mousse frog with a gold coating. We are heading straight to the top, and once the little details are fine-tuned, it will surely be reached. Here, outstanding uniqueness is delivered at the highest master class level.

High quality cooking