Udtryk – Copenhagen's fastest star, reborn after fire

Udtryk, Danish for expression, sits behind a courtyard in a classic yellow building on Teglgårdstræde, in the heart of Copenhagen's Indre By. It is a discreet stage for one of the city's fastest-moving restaurant stories. When chef Edward Lee opened the doors in May 2025, Denmark's Michelin inspectors handed him a star just forty-one days later, the quickest any restaurant in the country has ever received one. A short-circuit fire in April 2026 shut the kitchen down for months; the restaurant reopens on 1 December 2026 under Pascal Dallarosa, the sous chef who has been part of Udtryk since its first service and who already holds a star of his own, earned as head chef at Rossbarth in Austria. It holds One MICHELIN Star, a distinction the new kitchen inherits and intends to keep, cooking an omakase built nightly from whatever the market, the coast and the forest provide.

01The room and the setting

The address alone tells part of the story: a courtyard tucked behind a classic yellow Copenhagen building, the kind of quiet approach that gives no hint of what is inside. The dining room has been described as intimate and art-led, carrying custom works by the artist Bjørn Magnussen on its walls. Before the fire, Udtryk seated twenty-six guests across eight tables, with a separate private dining room for twelve.

The blaze that broke out in the early hours of 16 April 2026 started as a short circuit in wiring beneath the floor and spread quickly through the building, with the kitchen taking the worst of the damage. No one was hurt, but close to thirty firefighters and ten vehicles were needed to bring it under control. The owners kept the whole team on through the closure, and the restaurant now reopens on 1 December 2026, rebuilt and, in its own words, ready for 'Udtryk 2.0'.

02The chef

Pascal Dallarosa is not a newcomer stepping into someone else's kitchen. He has been at Udtryk since the very first service as sous chef, shaping the restaurant alongside its founder long before the fire forced a change of leadership. Earlier in his career he won a Michelin star in his own right as head chef at Rossbarth in Austria, a credential that gave the Norrlyst group the confidence to hand him the pass when founder Edward Lee departed abruptly at the end of February 2026.

Insider tip

Reopens 1 Dec 2026, Tue–Sat dinner only, 17-course omakase, reservations via waitlist if full.

Lee, born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia, had built Udtryk as a personal expression of a career spent across continents, having trained under Eric Vildgaard at Jordnær, where the restaurant was awarded two stars during his time there between 2018 and 2022 and has since gone on to earn a third. Dallarosa now carries that philosophy forward in his own idiom: precision, curiosity and what the restaurant calls 'cooking without rigid dogma'.

03The cooking

The kitchen works to an omakase approach rather than a fixed menu, shaped by whatever produce is best on a given day, often landed only hours before it reaches the plate. Fish from the morning boats, herbs picked in early light, meat aged to the kitchen's own schedule: the dishes shift with the season and with what the team finds at the market, on the coast or in the forest, rather than following a set script.

The sequence that carried Udtryk to its star ran to seventeen courses, priced at 1,850 kr., moving through raw fish, a Belgian caviar course with peas and scallops, a claypot of rice with short rib and eel, and a dessert built around lapsang tea and blood orange. A new version of the menu is being written ahead of the December reopening, continuing the same instinct-led method under different hands.

04What to order

On the menu that defined Udtryk before the closure, standout courses included hiramasa with pine, wasabi and calamansi to open; a beetroot tarte tatin with black garlic and preserved coriander; sweetbread with port wine and shiso; and a course of Belgian caviar with peas, scallops and fennel. Among the mains, A5 wagyu with juniper, Swiss chard and aged balsamico sat alongside a claypot of koshihikari rice with short rib, eel and shiitake, and a dumpling served in mushroom broth.

To finish, a lapsang custard with blood orange and lychee soufflé, followed by a bergamot pâte de fruit with kaffir lime and elderflower, and a 70% Mayan red chocolate course with sea buckthorn and Szechuan pepper. The kitchen also prepares vegetarian and pescetarian versions of the tasting menu on request, with 48 hours' notice, and can offer a gluten-reduced menu, though not a fully gluten- or lactose-free one.

05Wine and drinks

Three pairings run alongside the tasting menu. The Udtryk Pairing, at 1,595 kr. for eight glasses, is built around unfamiliar grapes and lesser-known regions, chosen specifically to surprise rather than to reassure. The Classic Pairing, also 1,595 kr., runs through Burgundy and other benchmark regions for guests who want recognisable names. For those not drinking, the NOLO Pairing at 995 kr. uses the restaurant's own tea infusions alongside a rotating selection of non-alcoholic products.

During Edward Lee's tenure, the wine list was overseen by sommelier Morten Magh, counted among Denmark's finest, whose selections were built to run alongside the kitchen's Asian-European sourcing rather than against it.

06When to go and booking

Udtryk reopens its doors on 1 December 2026, serving Tuesday to Saturday from 18:00 to midnight, and remaining closed on Sundays and Mondays. Reservations are open now; if no table is available on a preferred date, the restaurant runs a waitlist and will contact guests directly if a spot opens up. For guests closing out the year, the restaurant is also planning a long, 17-course New Year's Eve tasting menu.

The restaurant sits in Indre By, Copenhagen's old inner city, within walking distance of the canals and the rest of the capital's dense cluster of starred kitchens — useful context for anyone building a longer table-hopping evening around the Teglgårdstræde address.

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