Silberbauers Bistro – Nice's bistros, reborn in Nørrebro

Silberbauers Bistro sits half a flight of stairs below Jægersborggade in Nørrebro, in the basement room that for a decade belonged to Christian Puglisi's neighbourhood restaurant Manfreds before it closed at the end of 2020. In May 2021, Danish chef Mathias Silberbauer reopened the space as a French bistro, built on the plain, home-style cooking he ate off duty while running his own restaurant in Nice. Whitewashed walls, small tables set close together, and menus chalked up fresh on blackboards give the room its unforced, lived-in character. It holds a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, the guide's distinction for good quality, good value cooking, awarded, remarkably, within Silberbauer's first six months of trading, and held through the 2026 selection. It is a restaurant built for regulars rather than special occasions, and Nørrebro has taken to it accordingly.

01The room and the setting

The restaurant occupies the same low basement room Christian Puglisi once ran as Manfreds, reached down a short flight of steps from street level. Nothing about the fit-out tries hard: whitewashed walls, close-set small tables and a blackboard chalked up fresh each service carry the French bistro feel through, down to the choice of classic, generously proportioned Gallic dishes.

Red-and-white checked tablecloths and potted plants complete the look, alongside the same handwritten board that lists whatever the kitchen is cooking that day. Down in the wine store, a disco ball turns slowly above the shelves of natural bottles – a small, knowing joke tucked inside an otherwise serious cellar.

02The chef

Mathias Silberbauer's apprenticeship ran through three addresses that still define Copenhagen's new-Nordic scene: Manfreds, Bæst and Relæ, all under Christian Puglisi. In fact, his very first job as a cooking student, a decade before he opened his own restaurant, was in this same room when it was still Manfreds. From there he moved to London for a year at The Clove Club, before settling in Nice.

Insider tip

Closed Mondays; à la carte only; the blackboard menu changes daily, sometimes hourly.

In Nice, he opened Pure & V together with sommelier Vanessa Massé, and before long the restaurant earned him one MICHELIN Star. He eventually chose to return to Copenhagen and open something far more casual under his own name, taking over the old Manfreds room – and the Bib Gourmand followed within his first six months of running it.

03The cooking

The format is deliberately plain: à la carte only, with no tasting menu and no fancy plating, just the rustic French food Silberbauer ate on his nights off while cooking professionally in Nice. Niçoise dishes and seasonal local seafood lead the kitchen, and the idea for the place took shape while he was eating nightly at small local bistros there and felt the urge to recreate one back home.

The blackboard changes constantly, sometimes hourly, as the kitchen cooks through whatever the fishmongers deliver that morning; once a dish sells out, it is simply crossed off for the day. On one visit, the board carried a 23 kg line-caught swordfish, carved to order rather than pre-portioned.

04What to order

Certain dishes recur often enough to count as signatures: blue mussels with a generous spoon of aioli, and a Niçoise pissaladière, the onion tart topped with black olives. Elsewhere on the board, expect snails in garlic and herb butter and wild pigeon with foie gras in a port wine sauce.

Whole fish such as turbot are cooked simply on the bone rather than filleted, and most meals close with a sharp lemon tart or a classic crème brûlée.

05Wine and drinks

The list leans hard into natural producers, with an extensive selection drawn primarily from France to match the kitchen's acidity and salt rather than to impress for its own sake. The restaurant makes no secret of its natural-wine leanings, though there are enough classically made bottles on the list to reassure sceptics who prefer the traditional style.

06The neighbourhood

Jægersborggade itself is one short cobbled stretch beside Assistens Cemetery that went, within little more than a decade, from a rough backstreet to one of Copenhagen's most talked-about shopping lanes, a shift that began when Coffee Collective opened its original bar here in 2008. The street is now dense with ceramics studios, natural wine bars, design shops and bakeries, best explored slowly on a weekend morning.

A few doors along, behind a red door, the ceramicist Inge Vincents still throws porcelain so thin it looks like crumpled paper bags, one of several small, independent makers that give the street its character and make it worth the walk before or after dinner.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.