Porcelain and Smushi in Copenhagen

Recently, Royal Copenhagen, the venerable Danish porcelain company, opened The Royal Cafe, the third and final piece of their reinvented flagship store. The store itself received a major facelift last December and a museum dedicated to porcelain and the history of the company (you can actually try to paint the iconic Royal Copenhagen patterns) was added to the top floor.

The whimsical new café has an Alice in Wonderland feel with pink walls and a birch leaf-patterned ceiling and, of course, a main feature is the porcelain—you can choose which of the Royal Copenhagen services you want to eat or drink from. In our May issue, Jonathan Hayes reported on the wildly innovative new Nordic cuisine coming out of the country. This menu is a bit more traditional, with Ruds Køkken coffees (owner Rud Christiansen has a hand in the café), teas and Danish classics like red berry pudding with cream. But there's one wacky new creation that Tourism Denmark told me they think is a first: smushi. Smushi is a take on the popular Danish open-faced sandwich known as smørrebrød, and was described to me as an open-faced sushi sandwich. The name itself made me giggle. I guess I’ll have to taste it before I pass judgment. With whispers of a cooking school possibly being added to the mix I may even get to learn to prepare smushi by the time I make my way to Copenhagen.