Kadeau Copenhagen – Bornholm's terroir, three MICHELIN Stars

Kadeau Copenhagen occupies part of a former barracks complex on Wildersgade in Christianshavn, entered through a plain wooden door that gives no view of what lies behind it, so discreet is the restaurant that one could walk straight past. It is the city outpost of a kitchen that began in 2007 on the beach at Øster Sømarken on Bornholm, and since 2011 it has carried that island's foraging and preservation into the Danish capital. In June 2026 Kadeau was promoted to the MICHELIN Guide's highest distinction, moving from two stars to three and joining Geranium and Jordnær at the very top of Denmark's dining scene — it now holds Three MICHELIN Stars, having taken its first star in 2013 and its second in 2018. The leap made it only the fourth restaurant in Denmark's history, after Noma, Geranium and Jordnær, to reach the three-star level. Behind the project are three childhood friends from Bornholm — chef Nicolai Nørregaard, Rasmus Kofoed and Magnus Klein Kofoed — whose cooking turns a small Baltic island into a menu built almost entirely from what it grows, forages and preserves.

01The room and the setting

Inside, the surprise is immediate: a 275-square-metre dining room designed by the Copenhagen studio OEO, built around ceramic vases made on Bornholm and copper Monotypi artworks by Christian Lemmerz that abstract the island's nature. A corridor painted oxide black leads guests past a Kolumba-tiled floor and a cabinet lined with glass jars of preserved Bornholm fruit and herbs before the room opens onto the kitchen. The oak kitchen, with its wood-fired oven, sits beside a library lounge that leads out to a private garden, and all eight tables look either onto that courtyard through panoramic windows or into the open kitchen itself.

OEO Studio, founded by Thomas Lykke and Anne-Marie Buemann, returned in 2020 to recompose every surface in clay tones, brass and oak, adding a greenhouse overlooking the courtyard garden and hanging paintings by the Tehran-born, Copenhagen-based artist Farshad Farzankia throughout the space. The tableware is its own story: every piece is handmade by the Bornholm ceramicist Torben Lov, who has worked with Nicolai Nørregaard for more than fifteen years on a new line for each season, the designs sometimes following the menu and sometimes shaping it.

02The chef

Nicolai Nørregaard is self-taught, and founded Kadeau in 2007 with two childhood friends from Bornholm, Rasmus Kofoed and Magnus Klein Kofoed, before the trio opened the Copenhagen address in 2011. In 2022 Kyumin Hahn, the restaurant's long-time head chef, became a partner alongside them, formalising a kitchen that has effectively run as a single project across two addresses — a beach restaurant on Bornholm and a townhouse in Christianshavn — for close to two decades.

Insider tip

Book well ahead; dinner Tue–Fri from 18:00, Saturday lunch and dinner too; tasting menu around DKK 4,150.

03The cooking

The menu runs to around fifteen unique servings, and its character changes with the Bornholm calendar: colder months bring a focus on preservation techniques alongside the best Nordic meat and seafood, while spring and summer turn to whatever is fresh from the restaurant's own garden. That garden lies in Sømarken, less than a kilometre from the Bornholm restaurant, started in 2012 by Nicolai's father Flemming and now tended by Emil, a former sous-chef who has built up the soil through permaculture. Four plots, including two greenhouses, supply both restaurants with herbs, fruit, vegetables and honey through the warmer months, and the team spends the rest of the year preserving the surplus for winter.

Bornholm's unusually long summers let the kitchen grow fruit that would not otherwise survive this far north, figs and mulberries among them, and most of what reaches the table is grown or foraged on the island rather than bought in.

04Wine and drinks

A dedicated wine room with bespoke iron doors was built into the main dining room during the OEO redesign, its floors, walls and ceiling wrapped entirely in hot-rolled steel.

05When to go and booking

Kadeau Copenhagen serves dinner Tuesday to Friday from 18:00, with lunch added on Saturday from 12:00 ahead of an 18:30 dinner seating. The tasting menu is priced at DKK 4,150 per person. Availability has tightened noticeably since the 2026 promotion, so it is worth booking the moment a window opens, ideally through the restaurant's own site rather than leaving it to chance.

06The neighbourhood

Kadeau sits on the cobbled streets of Christianshavn, the canal district built on reclaimed land across the harbour from central Copenhagen, where old warehouses and merchants' houses now hold small galleries, bakeries and bars. A doorbell admits guests from the street into a room that feels closer to a considered private home than a restaurant, with rotating art on the walls and a hidden courtyard at its centre — a fitting setting for a kitchen that has spent close to two decades translating one small island into a single address in the city.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.