Kadeau, an island is served

On March 30th, bewitched by a dinner at Kadeau in Copenhagen, I wrote that I was looking forward to a visit in June to the first location, where it all began in 2007, 160 km east of Denmark and 37 south of Sweden, on the island of Bornholm. Looking at it on the map, surrounded by the Baltic Sea, it’s a little bigger than a bean. In truth, with a surface area of 588 square kilometres, if it were Italian it would be the third largest of the small Italian islands, more than twice the size of Elba.

You can reach it by ferry, what most people prefer to do, with or without a car in tow. The port is in Ronne, the capital. Very few choose to fly, so much so that I have flown, after years and years, on an Atr42, which was also half-empty. A very short trip, one night in Copenhagen, a second one there and then back already. No hotel. Instead, a tent at the Eco Beach Camp in Nexo, on the east coast, on the opposite side compared to Ronne. There, sharing the same management since this year, they offer a glamping service, that is to say a glamourous campsite next to a beach with sand so fine that they use it for hourglasses.

Bornholm is not so far north as to experience the full light months of the midnight sun, for which you have to cross the Arctic Circle, but midnight there is still less dark than in Italy. A taste of what it would be like to travel beyond Stockholm, in the direction of Tromso and the North Cape, when the sun dips just below the horizon and you, an Italian, the first days of your first trip to Scandinavia, wait for darkness to fall asleep, a night that never arrives, not in the form we are used to.

Everything there is relaxing, the meadows and forests, the undulating lines of the landscape, the coastline and the paths that people walk or cycle along, some with trolleys for children or dogs. A dip in the sea? We didn't really try, the water was as cold as freshly melted ice. But it also depends on what you're used to, as on 12 July the manager of the Kadeau had taken a mid-afternoon dip because the water was warm for her (!). This is not the first case I have encountered up there, including the far north. One should also note that the summer is really short and there Bornholm kicks off an important year: relaxing.

There is tourism after August. Already sun and rain alternate on the same day in June, July and August, let alone beyond.

Forget our summers at the seaside full of shouting, sun loungers on top of each other and parmigiana casseroles, both greasy and delicious. And as a gastronomic jewel, here is Kadeau of Nicolai Norregaard, in the kitchen, and Rasmus Kofoed, in the dining room, in Somarken on the south-east coast, a great spot to watch the sunset from the side, to the right as you look out to sea.

The restaurant occupies the only floor of a wooden construction, which is in practice constrained because it is close to the foreshore. This explains why the toilets are located outside, which was not surprising until the beach bar was taken over by high quality management.

The common thread between the two is the island's products, a double star in the capital, a red and a green one on the island. The island version opened on April 26th and will end on September 7th.

The summer season is longer in Copenhagen, from May 18th to October 5th, which will then give way to winter menus curated with preserved products, where practically every season has its importance and nothing is put into hibernation.

One menu in fifteen moments starting with a selection of garden vegetables, then Mahogany clams in cream and blackthorn buds, Macarello with fresh cheese and wild garlic, green salad and oysters, prawns and peas, pure poetry, before the one bite that lacked neat flavours, a tartlet of prosciutto and strawberries that was overly compact.

We flew high again with crab, quince and elderflower, scallops, white asparagus and caviar, as well as the marinated and then smoked salmon that bewitched me in Copenhagen in March, in practice the whisker is processed so that the outside firms up in favour of the creaminess of the inside, the only one you taste with intense pleasure.

And here we are at the most beautiful course, a sort of warm rye pizza, topped with grated cheese and plenty of petals and leaves, very tasty also because you eat it using your hands. Then calamari and celeriac, a millefeuille arranged vertically, ingenious and captivating; roasted cured pork as juicy as ever, the last savoury act before three sweet passages: Wild berries grown on their estate; pumpkin seed cream and fiordilatte ice cream; cardamom cake.

The curtain goes down and the ovation stands up, for the food and for those who conceived, cooked and served it. In the absence of the two owners, one was celebrating his birthday and the other was on holiday, I remember with pleasure Victoria Mallard in the dining room, chef Magnus Klein Kofoed shuttling between the fires and the tables, and Leonor Leo Padro at the cooker, a person who knows Milanese restaurants very well.

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso