Era Ora, About Time, is a concept Italian restaurant with ingredients purportedly flown in from Italy (makes me question slightly the green agenda.) The main influence is Umbrian and Tuscany but the restaurant is not afraid to go beyond those borders. The restaurant first earned its Michelin Star in 1996 which it has kept until now.

The exterior of the restaurant, located in Christianshavn, is very subtle. We walked by it a couple of times before realising it was the restaurant. Perhaps this was because it was fairly early on and the restaurant wasn’t quite so busy. The restaurant is filled with warm colours and fairly engaging interior decoration.

The menu consists of a tasting menu – it is up to you to choose how many courses. Bottled water is charged on a per person charge, rather than by bottle, which is both a plus and a negative. They certainly ticked my box for making sure our glasses were constantly topped up – still for me and sparkling for Pat.

For about £110 including service this is the food that we got:

An amuse bouche of Fried scallops with leeks, green apple and chilli sauce. This dish looked as good as it tasted.

Then our trio of starters. The first trio included:

Lobster salad with filo pastry and Cicerchia beans;
Pumpkin lasagna over fried Monte Veronese cheese,
Plaice rolled on swiss chard, potato, sun dried tomato and Jerusalem artichoke

The pumpkin lasagna was easily my favourite of these trios but that could be because it was warm where the other two dishes were cool. All three were very prettily presented though and involved an incredible detail in both the ingredients and the cooking.

Next up was a trio of

Veal tartar in love with crunchy cracker and foam of soya,
Castagnaccio with orange ricotta, banana chip and honey caramel,
Meat ball of venison in beans sauce with deep fried spring onion

These were really fun to eat. The castagnaccio (the middle item that looks like a cake) was an interesting addition to the trio.

A gorgeous Herbal risotto in scent of liquorice topped with roasted quail was up next for us. Incredibly delicate I wished that this dish would go on forever.

Next, another of my favourites was the home made trofie pasta rolled in venison ragout and red onion. It sounds like a fairly simple dish but the taste. Simply exquisite.

Then, sadly, we were on to our final savoury dish. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it as involved lamb but I was quite surprised. Roasted lamb filet with eggplant composition and fried tomato was nice and not overwhelmingly lambish in flavour.

Desserts started with a Cream of white chocolate in scent of lemon served with variation of fennel and lemon and

the Coffee cream, cookie crumbs, dark chocolate caviar and milk sorbet.

Both very enjoyable dessert dishes and really showed Era Ora’s commitment to maintaining the presentation and detail to the end.

We finished our meal with tea (which came in this cute teapot which sat on top of my cup – love Danish design!) and petit fours.

I can totally see why Era Ora has received the best Italian in Copenhagen moniker. Food is fantastic quality – I don’t think we could have had more ingredients in each of the dishes (nor plates – I thought they would run out of plates at one stage!) – and also innovative. For those who like their wine Era Ora prides itself on its giant wine cellar containing supposedly 90,000 bottles of vintage Italian wine. Service was for the main part a hit (for example, the constant topping up of water) without being in the way though it did drop off slightly towards the end when the restaurant started filling up. The only negative was that we were promised a copy of the menu on the way out (we asked for it twice) but they never handed one over …