ESSE – Matt Orlando's one-star return to a 1895 Nordhavn warehouse

In Nordhavn, behind an unmarked door in a warehouse that has stood since 1895, ESSE occupies the ground floor of Trelleborggade 13A/13B, its raw brick walls and vaulted wood ceilings restored rather than rebuilt. The restaurant marks the return to Copenhagen of California-born chef Matt Orlando, who rose from sous chef to the restaurant's first head chef at Noma before opening Amass with his wife Julie in 2013. After Amass closed in November 2022 following a ten-year run, and a two-year detour to Singapore with the research-driven restaurant AIR, Orlando came home to Denmark in December 2024 and opened ESSE in November 2025, bringing back around seventy per cent of his original Amass brigade. Six months later, in June 2026, the MICHELIN Guide awarded the restaurant its first star. The name, Latin for 'to be' or 'to exist', frames a kitchen built on regenerative organic farming, near-total use of Danish produce, and a refusal to waste anything that comes through the door.

01The room and the setting

ESSE is tucked down a back alley in Nordhavn, inside a warehouse restored to its original 1895 form rather than modernised beyond recognition. One recent account of a visit described the open kitchen keeping the dining room in constant motion, with Orlando himself coming out from behind the pass to serve a couple of courses personally rather than leaving it entirely to the floor team. The main dining room seats forty-two guests, complemented by a lounge for drinks and snacks, with four high stools at the bar kept for walk-ins who fancy a plate and a glass of wine without a reservation.

02The chef

Matt Orlando passed through Aureole and Le Bernardin in New York, then The Fat Duck in England, before Noma, where he worked his way up from sous chef to the restaurant's first head chef. In 2013 he and his wife Julie opened Amass in Copenhagen, a restaurant that over a decade became known for circular gastronomy and was twice named the most sustainable restaurant in Northern Europe. When Amass closed in November 2022 after that ten-year run, Orlando moved to Singapore to open AIR, a restaurant, research and education campus built around regenerative food practices. He returned to Denmark in December 2024, and roughly a year later opened ESSE with around seventy per cent of his original Amass team back on board. Beyond the stove, Orlando co-founded Endless Food Co., the venture behind THIC, a cocoa-free 'chocolate' made from the spent grain left over from brewing beer.

Insider tip

Dinner Tue–Sat, lunch Saturdays; reservations release two months ahead via the website.

03The cooking

At ESSE, regenerative organic farming is the starting point, with the kitchen led by the seasons and sourced almost entirely from Denmark; only for certain seafood does the team look across to Norway. The zero-waste instinct that defined Amass persists here too: the fermented potato bread made from potato peelings, once the dish that made Amass famous, is still on the menu. A review of the restaurant praised the remarkable depth of flavour the kitchen draws from seemingly unpretentious ingredients, built through fermentation, reduction and the kind of patience more often reserved for luxury produce.

04What to order

The current dinner line-up runs as the ESSE Menu, six courses for DKK 995, or the ten-course Journey Menu for DKK 1,395, both opening and closing the same way. Expect fjord shrimps with smoked Søtofte cream, alliums and seaweed; zander in dashi with magnolia and fennel flower; the fermented potato bread with house-cultured butter; celeriac with reduced whey, spruce and spring shoots; and chicken breast with walnut, kombu and lemongrass. The Journey Menu adds four further courses, among them chilled buckwheat noodles with sunflower-seed miso and Swedish Sichuan peppercorn, scallop with brown butter, hazelnut and Japanese quince, and a course of sweet-and-sour chicken thigh with ramson, horseradish and pumpkin seed. Both menus close with Søtofte milk ice cream, noble fir and burnt beetroot meringue.

05Wine and drinks

The list favours producers who work with their land to let it flourish within its own biodiversity, rather than chasing famous names. A dedicated pairing menu runs alongside the bottle list, and one review of the restaurant singled out a strong run of non-alcoholic drinks made in collaboration with Muri as a highlight alongside the more conventional wines.

06When to go and booking

ESSE serves dinner Tuesday to Saturday from 18:00 to midnight, and lunch on Saturdays from noon to three. Reservations open two months to the day, so a table for the first of December becomes bookable on the first of October, and a cancellation within 48 hours, or a no-show, carries a fee of DKK 1,000 per guest. Four bar stools are kept for walk-ins who want to eat à la carte without booking, and groups larger than four should email ahead. Children are welcome from the age of ten, though there is no separate menu — everyone eats from the same courses.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.