the gallery-restaurant reboot

Within the Design Museum Denmark is a green-filled sanctuary garden and equally delightful café, Format. Open for breakfast and lunch, and extending into evening service on Tuesdays, Format uses ingredients sourced only from local producers. Expect top-tier cooking with Brian Mondrup as head chef and Boglárka Megyesi, formerly at the Copenhagen-beloved bakery Andersen & Maillard, as pastry chef. The result? Buttery, experimental delights on the counter each day – “cafe de olla” or an espresso, cinnamon and sea salt roll a firm favourite – and generous servings of green, seasonal goodness. Comté cheese and whipped butter on top of a thick chunk of sourdough rye is a staple although come prepared to munch on the quiche of the day or a plate of hand peeled shrimps and white asparagus on a bed of rapeseed mayo. If you're in a time crunch head to Lille Format for all the blood orange spandauer, canelé and coffee to-go.

Glimpse across to the scattering of archipelago islands as a tasting menu dictated by the seasons is whisked to the tables. The top floor of Stockholm’s contemporary photography gallery Fotografiska plays host to a Michelin Green Star restaurant, and potentially the best views of the city. The 1910 built, former industrial customs house has seen quite a revamp, although the Art Nouveau decor preservers and the load-bearing woodwork remains. The interiors are simple, grey-hued and intimate, the food a deep-dive experiment into sustainability and flavour. With an on-site composting system and a basement hydroponic farm on-site, the abundance of veg takes farm-to-table dining to a new dimension. 

From the Bistro Freddie and Bar Crispin crew, comes not one, but two Crispin. One of which is in Spitalfields, and one, which is in the remarkable non-profit gallery and collaborative exhibition space that is Studio Voltaire. Celebrating the finest produce from the British isles, the restaurant and counter bar serves food as gloriously picturesque as the artwork itself. Wine bottles line the shelves, creating a pop of colour to the otherwise white brick work, the z-shaped silver counter bar and the ever-so orderly bar stools. We’ll be going back for the sticky and sweet, utterly delectable poached loquat tart.

Flere Fugle remains a steadfast Copenhagen favourite. The weekly agenda includes pizza and pilsner Tuesdays, bingo and fried Italian-bite Fridays to its dawn-to-dusk in-house bakery and run club. When the Copenhagen-relative long commute to Nordvest on Rentemestervej seems daunting, its sibling counterpart, Lille Fugl, is the next best thing. The bakehouse spices up the already frenziedly chic art mall and museum, Gammel Strand, with its early morning sourdough loaf wafts. Bag a seat on the outside terrace, play musical chairs with locals as they follow the sun’s glare and grab a few of the sweet and citrusy spandauer buns for brunch. If you’re hankering for a deal and inkling for a caffeine fix, purchase a Kunst & Kaffe ticket for the full exhibition and coffee hog. 

When the copper and glass pavilion of the Lambeth Garden Museum opened as The Garden Museum Café, the capital went into overdrive. Dow Jones architects are responsible for the reimagined space, incorporating the former churchyard remains and decadently shaping the polished concrete floor around the gravestone plaque. The lengthy glass windows stretch down to the external cobbles where plants and flowers wrap around the gardens in luscious folds of green. On those summer days the outdoor, courtyard tables are the ones to book. When Myles Donaldson – previously head chef at St. John Bread & Wine and the acclaimed Noble Rot – was anointed in charge of the kitchen, it became clear this was not an ordinary museum restaurant. Here, a whole red mullet is grilled to perfection and scattered with artichokes, kalamata olives, samphire strands and a good bask of butter and a Barnsley chop comes seared atop braised peas and a mint sauce. The hand dived scallops served with crunchy kohlrabi and elderflower vinaigrette are a particular winner.

A halle aux grains, or corn exchange, is housed within Paris’s Bourse de Commerce. This former Commodities Exchange, is now a stupefying Tadao Ando-designed contemporary art museum of the François Pinault collection. But it’s upstairs that Michel and Sébastien Bras have laid claim. Lured in by the grain-focused grub, the Bourellec designed interiors and the giddy views across the St. Eustache church, La Canopée and Centre Pompidou, Halle aux Grains has all the riffs of fine dining without an overbearing fancy. A sequence of four salty and two sweet dishes can be chosen from the “balade” (stroll) menu at lunch and an additional “jardins” (garden) menu as soon as dusk settles. Hake is griddled with aniseed butter, fennel, coral-soaked lentils and a barley froth and veal sweetbreads are roasted in buckwheat butter and served with fiddly swirls of shaved carrot from la Ferme du Perche. Pudding is no meagre affair. A whole oat financier dense with glutinously sweet Williams pear is enough to make one purr and the mille-feuille, with Madagascar vanilla cream and candied strawberries, is nothing less than a masterpiece. 

From the mastermind duo behind Oficina (chef, Naiara Sabandar and designer, Zana Josipovic) emerged Fonda. A bar and café hubbub within the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam’s bustling Museumplein. Suffice to say, the modernism of “The Bathtub” in Mels Crouwel’s 2012 renovation and extension of the museum is aptly matched through Fonda’s brushed steel stools, its long communal tables and its audibly aesthetic emerald green food trays. It is this same green that foils the curved and mighty wall within Oficina, a similar shade to their Hinata matcha latte or Sencha Yabukita tea. Settle downstairs at Fonda Bar (no ticket required) for an Aarhus-based La Cabra cold brew alongside a hunk of rhubarb-topped frangipane tart or, head upstairs to the café for the seasonal specials. The wild garlic frittata topped with a bittersweet radicchio and a perfect swirl of aioli is worth the journey.

If a city can lay claims to this hybrid art-bite charge, it’s Copenhagen. And kick firing this revolution was the infamous Apollo Bar & Kantine, tucked away in the courtyard of the Kunsthal Charlottenborg on the otherwise busy fanfare of Nyhavn. In 2017 restaurateur Frederik Bille Brahe – also the man behind Atelier September – stepped in to revive the student canteen of The Royal Danish Academy for Fine Arts housed in the former residence of Ulrik Fredrik Gyldenløve. The concept was simple. In a country where communal dining of organic and nutritious dishes is the norm, Brahe created a social space to be used by students, museum-goers and the general public alike. With Rune Bruun Johansen in charge of design, Børge Mogensen’s J39 chairs (slightly paint splattered from their studio days) scatter around the oak tables, marble busts contrast the art-deco lampshades and the velour blue bar stools compliment the outrageously red paint. One set lunch is served in the Apollo Kantine from Tuesday to Friday – whether it be a baked Hokkaido pumpkin or kale and barley broth. Apollo Bar however remains open for dinner, serving wildly experimental bar snacks and dishes. Stick around for the occasional pop-ups, loppemarked (flea markets) and patio tastings, it’s then that the Apollo community thrives. 

Far from the ricotta-whipped pancakes and comparatively simple cheese-topped buns, Nerua is Josean Alija’s Michelin-starred and World’s 50 Best passion-project within the Bilbao-based Guggenheim. Nodding to the Basque cuisine, traditions and rich culture, Alija’s menus change three times a year: spring, summer and winter. Choose from à la carte or the eight-course “Muina” tasting experience in which plates of decadently-dressed seasonal ingredients are flurried to your table. The flavours are exquisite, albeit the portions small, though it’s the wine pairing that really hits the mark.