Restaurant Review - ElDorado

Restaurant Eldorado - Wildersgade 10A,1408 København K

After all the media buzz since the release of the Michelin Nordic Guide 2016 a few weeks ago, I have been feeling like sitting in a decent restaurant to relish proper food, away from the nachos, baked salmon and beef bearnaise served in most average cafes and restaurants in Copenhagen. So, after receiving my payslip, I decided to indulge myself in one of my favourite little pleasures.

I decided to try out ElDorado, the new "little-brother" from the Michelin-star-awarded guys from Restaurant Kadeau. ElDorado also shares location with its big brother, sitting right next door to each other in Christianshavn, one of the most colourful and trendy neighbourhoods in Copenhagen.

I arrived late, as I like to do to avoid waiting in excess or having trouble to find a table, since I showed-up without a previous reservation. Also, arriving towards the end of the service sometimes entails a free portion of left overs from the kitchen, although it did not happen this time.

I entered the restaurant at 21:15, which is very late for a weekday (Thursday) according to Danish standards. The place is still quite full and main dishes are carefully served to the dining area. People is still eating and the open kitchen appears busy preparing food, not cleaning up yet.  So, I stand next to the cash register, at the obviously-designated waiting-to-be-seated area.

Bar at ElDorado - (source: www.aok.dk)

A waiter carrying some plates notices me. Eye contact. I nod at him and wait. To my surprise though, he just keeps doing other things after serving what he was carrying. Apparently he already forgot me. I stare at him, trying to establish visual contact again. Nothing happens, no feedback, it feels like he does not really want to see me. Maybe is because it is "late"? Probably. Or rather he is just a mediocre waiter? Sadly, I confirmed the latest soon.

After a minute or two of awkward waiting, a cook -someone with authority in the restaurant judging by the way he walks, moves and talks to people- comes along. "Is the kitchen still open?" I ask. He looks at his watch and answers: "For 5 more minutes". " Can I order something real quick?". "Yes, sure. Do you want to sit at the bar?", he replies. Nice move. A polite way of avoiding me messing up one more table already at the end of the service, and I was happy to sit there so I could closely observe the incompetence of the waiters and see part of the open kitchen. At last someone service-minded and with some sense of responsibility in this restaurant!

The menu is handed to me by the waiter while I sit and settle. "Would you like sparkling or still water?" Still, please". That sounds better! The music a little too loud for my taste but then I realise that it is just because a loudspeaker is a meter and a half above of my head. The waiter quickly brings the water and annoyance along. "What do you like to drink? Wine, beer?" he asks, after letting me look at the menu for only thirty seconds. "Well, I would like to decide what I eat first, thanks". Luckily he did not serve me any longer. I want to point out that this was a different guy than the one looking and completely ignoring me at my arrival. Anyway, none of them were any good. Denmark really comes up short on customer service, especially in restaurants, so do not expect a great service around here. No bread is served and the starter arrives.

I ordered Padrón peppers with bonito flakes and soya sauce as starter. Coming from Catalonia (as of today, still Spain) the peppers were not the best I have ever tasted but were not bad either. For those of you who may not know it, in Spain there is a saying that goes: "Pimientos del padrón, algunos pican y otros no(n)", which roughly translates to "some padrón peppers are spicy and others not". Well, that was the proof. None of them was spicy. They were well cooked and soft.

The bonito was dry salted, sliced in extremely thin flakes and topping the peppers. With the heat released from the peppers, they contracted and expanded continuously, creating a movement and an illusion of aliveness in the plate. Very interesting stuff. At this point I am happy to have paid 45 DKK (6€) for three tiny peppers. That is the sort of thing I was looking for. An interesting mix of tastes and some excitement in my plate. At the bottom of it all, there laid a thick soya sauce, making the whole thing a little bit salty. That's what you get when you overdose on glutamate: umami can superpose to other tastes.

Main - Cod with Chinese spinach and red curry

The main arrived as soon as I finished the starter. They really wanted to get me out quickly. I ordered  Cod with Chinese spinach and red curry. The cod came wrapped in some leaf, on it was apparently cooked. There were two plates. One with the cod and a bowl of curry and one wit the lonely leaves. The waiter (yet a third one) asked me to unwrap it, place it in the other plate with the leaves, add "a lot of curry" and enjoy.  I guess the cooks wanted to create this trendy feeling of "going for an experience" more that just to eat well, so you actually had to do some "work". Well, the idea wasn't bad, but they should have tried their intentions before and realise that it was actually impossible to transfer the fish from one plate to another without using your hands. Maybe I just didn't understand it and you were supposed to unwrap the thing directly into the other plate. But how, if not using your hands? Anyway, that is were, in a serious restaurant, the waiter comes in, explaining you how to properly do it. Not in ElDorado. Here you are on your own, even though the waiters are right in front of you talking nonsense to each other.

I must say though, the curry was extremely good. Spiced up to the point that makes your taste buds jump but you don't want to scream yet. The Chinese spinach was slightly undercooked, being a little tough to chew. Given its' size  and structure, it was difficult to cut and generally troublesome to handle. And the only tool available was a poor blade-less knife. There were also some branches of fresh coriander easier to manage, giving the dish a foreseeable "oriental twist".

Finally, the cod, that good little fella among all these toughs. Each one of them was doing its best to cover and its truly good taste. Cod is not the most tasty fish wandering the oceans but the guys at the kitchen of ElDorado got it quite right. Not salty but preserving its' sea essence, soft to the bite and of an appropriate size. All combined, cod, curry and vegetables, was an interesting mix taking you on a short journey from the saltiness of the cod, to the freshness of the coriander getting through the right hotness of the curry. Good overall but it succumbed in stereotypical ingredients in my opinion.

 At the end, given the curry soup I was left with, I wanted to soak some bread on it. It was obviously too much sauce for the limited absorption capabilities of both vegetables and cod. So I asked one of the three waiters -any of whom looked at me again until I was finished- for some bread. "Of course!" he exclaims, and instantly brings me two big pieces of nice, brownish and dense bread perfectly toasted and a little bowl of melting butter with black pepper that was unmistakeably waiting to be served to me from the very moment I ordered.

The bill

To bring all this down I had a white wine called Torrontés Brutal from the label "Via Revolucionaria", one of the few labels of Passionate Wines, a small and interesting winery in the Argentinian Mendoza region. The grape variety was something called Torrontes. I had never heard any of those names before but I was pleasantly surprised before even sipping in. It had a bitterness closer to kombucha than to wine at some points, a little fruity but not sweet at all. I enjoyed it and went quite well with both dishes. I have now learned that Passionate Wines is the personal project of Matias Michelini a wine enthusiast that aims to transmit his passion and soul to the wines he produces, and does so big time judging by the one I have tried.

Conclusion: 300 crowns for average quality meal with just a spike of creativity in a wanna-be-fancy place. Mediocre service. Fortunately, good wine. It was a 3 out of 5. And I am being generous.