Geranium

Geranium is a tasting-menu restaurant on the eighth floor of Parken, the national football stadium in the Østerbro district of Copenhagen. Its windows look out over the trees of Fælledparken.

Chef Rasmus Kofoed and sommelier Søren Ledet, friends since their youth, opened it in 2007 in Kongens Have, the royal garden by Rosenborg Castle. The first site won a Michelin star but had to close when an investor went bankrupt, and the pair reopened in the stadium tower the following year. Kofoed trained at Hotel d'Angleterre on Kongens Nytorv and at Scholteshof in Belgium. He was the first chef to compete three times at the Bocuse d'Or in Lyon, taking bronze, then silver and finally gold.

Kofoed stopped eating meat himself years before he removed it from the restaurant's menu, so that fish, shellfish and vegetables carry the whole meal. Produce comes from biodynamic farms in Denmark, and he forages wild plants himself. A long tasting menu has included roe of lumpfish, smoked only briefly and dressed with apple, kale and milk, and forest mushrooms with beer and smoked egg yolk, served with rye bread. Marbled hake and a razor clam in a shell of edible dough have also appeared, each plate set on crockery inspired by nature.

Open fires, pale wood and floor-to-ceiling glass frame the room, and the kitchen works in full view. Geranium became the first Danish restaurant with three Michelin stars. In 2022 The World's 50 Best Restaurants named it the best restaurant in the world, the first time a restaurant without meat on its menu reached the top of any 50 Best list, and it then moved into the Best of the Best hall of fame next to Noma.