Den Røde Cottage

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A red cottage at the edge of the forest

Set in Cottageparken between Klampenborg and Taarbæk, a stone's throw from the Øresund strait, Den Røde Cottage occupies a setting that feels genuinely apart from the city — without being far from it. The ground-floor dining room is deliberately intimate, creating the kind of close atmosphere that rewards unhurried meals. Upstairs, a private room accommodates parties of up to 36.

The kitchen and the people behind it

Chef Simon Lerche leads the kitchen, shaped by his training under Jan Friis Mikkelsen at Tinggården and a stint at Kadeau. The cooking sits in a neo-classical register: local, seasonal produce handled with technique that draws from the French tradition, but without molecular theatrics. Everything, the restaurant insists, is made from scratch. On the floor, restaurant manager Morten Magh — previously at Le Sommelier and AOC — brings both precise hospitality and deep wine knowledge to every service.

That combination has earned Den Røde Cottage recognition at the highest level: White Guide awarded it Masters status, praising the precision of the cooking, the quality of the seasonal ingredients, and wine pairings that consistently elevate each course.

What to expect on the plate

The lunch menu spans oysters and marinated herring at one end, and dishes like butter-fried new potatoes with lovage, seared scallops with peas and fennel, Norway lobster with beetroot and rose hip, and venison with poached rhubarb and new potatoes at the other. Desserts lean on Danish produce — fresh strawberries with sorbet and raw cream, or a fried Camembert with pickled blackcurrants.

For private dinners and events, the kitchen shifts into a more composed, multi-course format. A spring menu, for instance, moves through pikeperch with green asparagus and dill cream, grilled white asparagus with ramson hollandaise, cured venison with smoked cheese, veal with miso and horseradish sauce, and Danish strawberries with caramelised almond. Optional additions — caviar, foie gras, lobster and truffle — allow the menu to be extended for those who want the full evening.

The spirit of the place

The restaurant describes its kitchen as driven by love for good craft and traditional dishes in its own interpretation — a phrase that holds up when you look at the detail on the plate. Seasonal events punctuate the year: a Midsummer's Eve dinner in the park, a shellfish evening, a truffle night, a monthly Friday bar. The atmosphere throughout is warm and informal, with what the team calls attentive hosting without formality — tradition meeting renewal, as they put it, in a setting that happens to be rather beautiful.