Levi – grappa and sake on the corner of Ny Østergade

Levi occupies a sunlit corner of Ny Østergade and Store Regnegade in Copenhagen's Indre By, inside a new building that went up fast on a site once used as a car park. It opened its doors on 31 March 2022, the work of restaurateurs Jesper Boelskifte and Peter Trauboth together with designer-partner Johannes Torpe, who styled the restaurant from the logo to the furniture to the lighting. The kitchen, run by head chef Andrea Calducci, treats Italian and Japanese cooking as neighbours rather than strangers, a pairing the founders named after Romano Levi, the late Italian grappa master whose uncompromising, hand-finished craft they wanted the restaurant to echo. In the MICHELIN Guide, Levi carries a Bib Gourmand, the mark reserved for cooking of real quality at a fair price, rather than a Star — recognition for a kitchen that handles expensive things like caviar and A5 wagyu without ceremony, inside a room built for conversation rather than instruction.

01The room and the setting

Johannes Torpe, co-founder and the designer behind every surface at Levi, took on far more than the walls. At the heart of the room sits a horseshoe-shaped bar topped in verde marble, ringed by mossy green seating and backed by chrome, with bespoke lighting fixtures above it that look like giant balls of mercury. Pale larch wraps the building's beams and columns, smooth plasterwork softens the open kitchen, and terrazzo flooring underfoot repeats the same green and plaster tones found throughout the dining room — even the washroom shifts register, its ribbed walls finished in a monochrome blush pink.

Custom banquettes curve the length of the space, looking out through tall windows onto the bicycle-lined streets of the inner city, in a palette of jade green and natural wood that recalls 1930s Milan. The seating is by Moroso, the lighting by Leucos, chosen by Torpe to sit alongside his own custom pieces — a studio approach that extended, by his own account, to designing everything from the logo to the bathroom furniture.

02The chef

Head chef Andrea Calducci arrived in Copenhagen after running kitchens in Shanghai, London and Dubai, persuaded to make the move by founders Jesper Boelskifte and Peter Trauboth. The brief was built on an observation about the two cuisines on the menu: both Italian and Japanese cooking, left alone, tend to resist piling on flavours, relying instead on a handful of good ingredients handled with restraint rather than a long list of components fighting for attention.

Insider tip

Closed Sundays; lunch Mon–Sat 12–15, dinner Mon–Sat from 17.30, kitchen closes 22–23.

03The cooking

Levi's menu changes every week, built not as a sequence of courses but as a run of small, medium and larger plates meant to be ordered across the table and shared rather than eaten alone — there is no single fixed menu beyond the nightly omakase. The kitchen takes the honest, few-ingredient instincts of Italian cooking and lets them meet the exotic pantry and precision of Japan, a collision that shows up in dishes built around raw fish, XO sauce, miso and yuzu kosho sitting next to arancini, gnocchetti and hand-made pasta.

04What to order

Among the small dishes, oysters come with aged rice vinegar and mint, and lardo toast is finished with caviar; the rice cake with Mazara prawns and chili is one of the kitchen's more talked-about bites, alongside a wagyu striploin arancino lifted with wasabi. From the larger plates, the risotto with vongole, razor clams and kombu and a spaghetti dressed with caviar and a miso-butter sauce sit next to fallow deer with seasonal greens and a yuzu kosho jus. To finish, there is a pistachio gelato with olive oil and salt, or a plate of three Italian cheeses. For anyone who wants the kitchen to choose, there are three nightly omakase menus — Lille, Condivisa and Deluxe — each with an optional wine pairing to match.

05Wine and drinks

Boelskifte and Trauboth filled the cellar themselves, leaning hard into Italy's crisp whites, sparkling wines and deep reds, while leaving room for producers from further afield. The cocktail list runs alongside it: a Levi Paloma built on a homemade cordial, reposado tequila and soda, and a reworked Pisco Sour sharpened with matcha tea. True to the name on the door, there is also a dedicated avec list of grappa and aged fruit distillates, served solo or as a Levi set paired with an espresso — a small, direct tribute to Romano Levi himself.

06When to go and booking

Levi serves lunch Monday to Saturday from 12.00 to 15.00, and dinner Monday to Thursday from 17.30 with the kitchen closing at 22.00, extending to 23.00 on Friday and Saturday; the restaurant is closed all day Sunday. It sits an easy walk from Kongens Nytorv, making it simple to reach by metro from anywhere in the city centre — useful to know before a weekend booking, since the horseshoe bar and dining room fill quickly once the kitchen opens.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.