We’ve been staying at the very convenient The Square Hotel, literally on one of the main squares in Copenhagen. It has a room service agreement with probably the only “Australian” restaurant in Copenhagen, Reef ‘N’ Beef. Unlike the trashy (though sometimes convenient Walkabout), Reef ‘N’ Beef is a higher end restaurant, serving dishes all based around Australian foods.

The restaurant has many tables, and it seemed very popular with many other tables full of Danish people. We didn’t really get a chance to look at the wine list before ordering the beers, and it seemed like the owners might have come from South Australia with beers like VB, Crown Lagers, Carlton Cold, Little Creatures, and Rogers Dark.

As you can, we got to sample most of them throughout the night.

The menu isn’t particularly vegetarian friendly, with only one main, “The Vegetarian”, a tomato tart providing any options with a number of salads and appetisers allowed. I started with the Ibacus Peronii Tempura (a dish based on a Moreton Bay Bug served with a green papaya and passion fruit dressing). Being a salad, it included a variety of greens and then accompanied with a shot of lusciously sweet mango foam. Beautifully presented, and extremely tasty, it didn’t take too long for me to finish it.

I couldn’t but help but have the seafood medley, the “Gold Coast Fishernet” (Aussie seafood and shellfish selection with fish soup, Tasmanian saffron aioli and croutons). The dish arrived with the large variety of pan roasted seafoods, and then, table-side, covered with the saffron soup. Each piece of seafood was perfectly seasoned, and amazingly remained crispy skinned for most of the dinner. The croutons were less memorable and my only real complaint was the aioli served with the dish seemed out of place when the seafood was already swimming in the soup.

We finally finished off the dinner, unable to resist the dessert. They had pavlova for goodness sake! A very big twist on the classic Australian dish, the pavlova ended up served as a trio of desserts, the first a soft pavlova rolled around a pistachio cream centre, a white chocolate (?) slice and then a spoonful of raspberry sorbet, the perfect palate cleanser for the end of the night.

I can’t say that the dinner was particularly cheap (considering beer is guaranteed expensive in Denmark), but the food was great quality and presented beautifully each time.

Name: Reef ‘N’ Beef
Found at: JERNBANEGADE 4, DK-1608 KØBENHAVN V
Website: http://www.reefnbeef.dk/