Choose Bar Area or Dining Room Before You Book on Tock
A four-course set, a beer list built to sit beside the food, and Snøhetta's blonde oak in the old Noma space. The first decision is which Tock reservation to book.
Four courses: cured trout, beef tartare, braised lamb leg or grilled plaice, baked plums. That is the set at Barr, a kitchen cooking Nordic comfort food from the North Sea and the European beer belt, with a strong craft beer program beside it.
Thorsten Schmidt heads the restaurant in partnership with René Redzepi. It occupies Strandgade 93 in Christianshavn, the former home of the original Noma, redesigned by Copenhagen studio Spacon. The menu pairs individual servings with larger sharing dishes, aimed at people who plan to drink as carefully as they eat.
Barr serves rustic, intensely flavoured Nordic cooking in a blonde-oak room, with an amazing array of cask and bottled beers.
Editorial Deep
The four-course set has no schnitzel in it, yet the schnitzel is the dish the kitchen is known for: a show-stopper, served with lashings of Barr's butter sauce with anchovies. What the set carries instead is cooking that is intensely flavoured and rustic, with classic Nordic roots taken to new heights, and the sweet cake is a must. The trout comes with courgettes, yoghurt and whitecurrant. The beef tartare has ramson mayonnaise, kohlrabi and unripe blackcurrant. The main is braised lamb leg or grilled plaice, each with a side of beans, and the meal closes on baked plums with crème fraîche ice cream and woodruff.
The door is on Strandgade 93, the quayside address of the original Noma. The room is laid-back, with wood-clad walls, undulating blonde oak and a beamed ceiling above. The bar area sits to the right of the entrance, and the main dining room runs beyond it. Interiors are Danish modernism at its best, and Snøhetta has made a welcoming and comfortable space.
Book on the restaurant's Tock page (exploretock.com/restaurant-barr) or call +45 32 96 32 93; Barr manages its own bookings. Tock lists the Bar Area as its own dinner reservation, separate from the main dining room, so the seat is chosen at the moment of booking. Pairs and trios who pick the Bar Area sit at the bar counter or a high table, and parties of four may get a high or low table. A bar-area booking does not bring a standard low table for two.
Start with the set. Cured Trout and Beef Tartare on the carte come to 380 between them, and the set's 765 leaves the remaining 385 to cover the lamb or plaice main with beans and the baked plums.
The first order is the four-course set with the matching beverages. The second drops the set for the carte: Pointed Cabbage and Oyster, the Grilled Waffle, the Beef Tartare, then the schnitzel if it is on the list and the sweet cake if it is listed, taken at the bar counter with a craft beer. The schnitzel is a dish worthy of repeat visits, which gives the kitchen a standing reason to be revisited.
What to eat
Don't miss.
The four-course set with the beer pairing, plus Oysters Josefine; add the schnitzel if it is on the list that evening.
“Barr pairs a four-course set with a blonde-oak quayside room and a deep cask and bottled beer list.”
Come for the four-course set, the oysters and the beer list, and decide on the bar counter or the main room when you book. If you want one long menu with no choices, look elsewhere; the format here is a short set plus a carte.
The Verdict
