This Uformel Copenhagen Review is from our visit to Uformel (which means “informal” in Danish), the ostensibly “edgy” brother restaurant of formel B, which has 1 Michelin Star. Visiting Denmark? See all our posts tagged Copenhagen.
Uformel Location and Hours
Uformel is located at Studiestræde 69, about a 6 minute walk from the Nimb Hotel in Tivoli, where we were staying (review forthcoming). It's open nightly for dinner from 5:30pm, with last orders for the kitchen taken at 9:45pm on weekdays, and 10:45pm on Friday and Saturday nights.
The Scene
We arrived for an early dinner, around 6pm, and only a few other young couples and a group of about 10 Danish locals were seated. We were the only family with a kid, although the restaurant is smart casual, and would be fine to take a kid to, as long as your child is open to different flavors and can sit through a more leisurely meal, since there's no kids menu.
Uformel Menu and Food
The uformel menu is quite compact, with about 5 snack choices and 5 a la carte tasting choices, plus desserts. On the night we visited, there was no lamb dish available.
We started with the Pork Cracklings with Yeast Cream, which my husband and son enjoyed, but I found relatively tasteless.
Next, we were brought some bread rolls with butter. These became an essential part of our meal, since the tasting portions were in several cases far tinier than we anticipated.
Our first course was the Danish Trout with Pickled Kohlrabi and Horseradish, which barely had any trout in it, which made the dish unbalanced. With more trout it would have been a tasty starter.
The Grilled Celeriac with Egg Yolk and Mushroom Vinaigrette was similarly tiny. We like vegetables, and when you're charging nearly $20 a plate, with an inexpensive main ingredient such as celeriac that isn't filling by any means, why not make it a larger portion instead of a doll-size serving?
If you must go to uformel, I recommend ordering the Turbot, since at least this was a reasonable sized tasting portion and the fish was cooked perfectly.
Similarly, the Guinea Fowl was an adequate tasting size portion, although I was very disappointed that instead of the Chanterelles as mentioned in the menu, there were ordinary white mushrooms, which aren't anything like real chanterelles in flavor or texture. Perhaps there was a translation issue, but not what I was expecting.
The most disappointing dish of the evening was the so-called Specialty dish, which cost 185 DKK (~$30) instead of the 120 DKK (~$19) of the other dishes. I understand that it's a tasting dish, and obviously didn't expect a whole or half lobster, but come on–when the total amount of lobster fits into 1 Tablespoon, that's stingy and just insulting. Why even call it “Roasted Lobster with Carrots and Tomato Vinaigrette” when a more apt description would be “Carrots…Plus Don-Your-Glasses-to-Find-the-Lobster-in-this-Dish.”
The cheese plate was fine, although not much better than I've gotten as airline cheese plates in business class:
I liked the Wild Blueberries dessert, particularly the blueberry sorbet, which was bursting with flavor. Perhaps we should have ordered a Turbot dish and blueberry dessert for each of us, as it would have been a more satisfying meal.
The Verdict
Copenhagen has developed a reputation as a foodie mecca, and I had high expectations of Uformel, as the sister restaurant to Michelin star formel B. But my expectations were too high, and I was disappointed with our meal and service quality, especially for the price. The truly minuscule amount of lobster in a $30 dish was insulting, the other dishes weren't very memorable, apart from the blueberry sorbet, and service, after the first half of the meal, was spotty, with no one checking on us. We had to go stand up to find someone to pay the bill, even though the restaurant was less than half full. And even after a $60 per person meal and eating the entire bread basket, we still had to stop at the grocery store on the way back to the hotel, for some yogurt, as we were all still hungry. Not recommended.
If you've dined at uformel or formel B, what was your experience?
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Disclosure: We paid for our own meal at uformel.
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