Cofoco Copenhagen | cheriecity.co.uk

A Great Stay at Coco Hotel in Copenhagen

March 16, 2023 by cheriecity

Parisian style meets Danish design at Coco Hotel, a sustainable boutique hotel in Copenhagen’s hip Vesterbro neighbourhood.

Coco opened in 2019 and has become popular among travellers for its chic, affordable rooms and verdant inner courtyard where locals cycle over to spend their evenings over glasses of natural wine.

You may already be familiar with its owner – it’s the first hotel from Copenhagen Food Collective (known as Cofoco), the brains behind buzzing Copenhagen restaurants like Høst, Scarpetta, Les Trois Cochons, Vaekst and Vespa.

Arrival

It’s impossible to miss Coco Hotel on Vesterbrogade with its colourful Parisian-style striped awnings and traditional pavement cafe tables. We arrived after 5pm and found the hotel beautifully decorated for Christmas and in a rather jolly mood, as guests were midway through the complimentary wine hour.

We were warmly welcomed by the friendly, dynamic team and swiftly given the old school brass tassel key to our room (don’t worry, they take care of it while you’re out).

Cafe Coco & Coco Bar à Vin

The reception curves around to the open-plan Cafe Coco, a casual space with French art posters, bistro-style tables and cosy nooks. Here you can enjoy light meals including morning pastries and organic coffee, healthy avocado toast and burrata for lunch and an evening cheeseboard with charcuterie and sourdough.

From 4pm, the cafe and leafy courtyard seamlessly become Coco Bar à Vin, offering over 150 different wines carefully chosen by the sommelier.

The Room

The hotel’s 88 rooms range from a petite Single Room to a spacious Junior Suite and there is a Family Suite with a separate room and Playstation 4 for kids.

We were instantly charmed by our cute, bohemian Small Double Room and found it slightly more spacious than expected. It reminded me of Hotel Amour and Le Pigalle in northern Paris, but with a sense of Nordic simplicity.

The neutral greige walls were complemented by stylish rattan furniture, a brass clothes rail and a retro photography print above the wooden headboard custom-built by local furniture makers Københavns Møbelsnedkeri.

The double bed was extremely comfortable with a plush Auping mattress, organic cotton linen and plump pillows – we slept very well during our stay. The large windows opened out to the courtyard (so the room was nice and quiet) and there was also a flatscreen TV, free wifi, a selection of art books and a gourmet organic snack tray.

Tea and coffee facilities and a mini fridge would offer some home comforts, however they are not offered due to the hotel’s environmental policy.

Edit: we enjoyed Coco Hotel so much that we visited again in 2024 and stayed in a Superior Double Room with bright blue walls, overlooking the street. Everything was excellent and it was worth choosing the larger room for more space, although I did prefer the Christmas tree view over the courtyard.

The Bathroom

The bathroom was petite and spotlessly clean with smooth pastel pink tiles, a walk-in shower, fully opening windows (a rarity in hotels these days), eco-friendly Hopal toiletries and a gorgeous Laboratorio Olfattivo handwash. I was particularly impressed with the powerful underfloor heating, which made the room feel even more cosy.

Breakfast

Each morning, we started the day with breakfast at Delphine, the hotel’s bright and spacious sister restaurant just across the road. The organic breakfast buffet was simple but high quality with a selection of freshly-baked breads, flaky pastries, Danish cured meats and cheeses, soft boiled eggs, pomegranate and coconut chia pudding and a selection of fresh juices.

Some scrambled eggs and bacon would have made it feel more indulgent, but clearly the hotel has a healthier approach.

Amenities

Coco Hotel is nothing like Copenhagen’s many corporate hotels, so you won’t find a business centre, event spaces or a gym. Instead, you can play ping pong in the 5th floor games room and take advantage of the hotel’s health and wellbeing partnerships with Vesterbronx Gym, Ara’Kai beauty, AIRE Ancient Baths Copenhagen and STUDIO 41 Pilates.

Sustainability

Denmark is officially the second greenest country in the world (just behind Sweden) and Green Key certified Coco Hotel has its own clever sustainability practices. Cofoco owns a solar park in Jutland, which powers the hotel and the entire restaurant group with clean, green energy. Coco Hotel also partners with Eden Reforestation Projects to help plant trees in Kenya.

Location

Coco Hotel is in the heart of lively Vesterbro surrounded by notable restaurants, cafes, bars and bakeries and conveniently, an easy 10-minute walk from Central Station. Also nearby is the Meatpacking District, where you can dine around hotspots like Fleisch, Warpigs, Mother and Hija de Sanchez. For a spot of culture, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, the National Museum of Denmark and the iconic Tivoli Gardens are just 20 minutes away on foot.

Impressions

Coco Hotel is the perfect choice for a relaxed, budget-friendly city break, especially if you love characterful hotels in a cool, creative area. It has plenty of Wes Anderson-style eccentricities but everything functions well and it generally exceeded my expectations.

For more information and booking, visit: www.coco-hotel.com

All photos by Chérie City

Copenhagen, Restaurants

Amazing Places to Eat Out in Copenhagen

April 3, 2017 by cheriecity

Copenhagen has a thrilling food scene, whether it’s innovative Michelin star Nordic cuisine, tempting street food or classic Danish bites. In fact, there are so many destination restaurants, new openings and cool brunch spots that you might find it hard to tick them all off your wish list.

Here are a few foodie gems that we discovered during our recent first trip to Copenhagen…

Höst

One of the highlights of our trip was a fabulous dinner at the beautiful and atmospheric Höst. This casual fine Nordic dining restaurant offers a three or five course set menu with a number of inventive dishes in-between courses.

On this food journey, we feasted on delicacies from the Danish land and sea, experiencing a diverse range of flavours with a few ‘wow’ moments along the way.

The experience was flawless and struck the right balance between relaxed and ceremonious. Starting from around £40 for a three-course menu, it’s also great value and more accessible than some of Copenhagen’s high end restaurants.

To read the full review, click here.

Mother

Mother, in the hip Kødbyen (Meatpacking district), is a casual, buzzing Italian restaurant that serves up authentic Neapolitan pizzas from a wood-fire oven. This regenerated warehouse complex is filled with cool restaurants and bars such as Fiskebar, Gorilla, Paté Paté and Warpigs, and is the place to be for a weekend night out.

Mother has a casual, lively atmosphere and is a top pick if you’re in the mood for something hearty and rustic at a decent price.

While inspiration comes from Italy, Mother has a bit of Danish flair. Not only are the pizza toppings organic and mostly produced in Copenhagen, but the signature sourdough base is made from natural yeasts and purified seawater to make it easier on the stomach.

In the name of research, we tried two contrasting pizzas – a classic Margherita with plenty of creamy mozzarella, simple crushed tomatoes and a chewy, fluffy and nicely blistered dough, and the more adventurous Burning Love. This inventive pizza bianca, topped with mozzarella, potatoes, fried onions and røget spæk (a bit like lardo) was super-rich, like an Alpine tartiflette crossed with a pizza. I highly recommend sharing a few slices of each, as both are delightful and not to be missed.

Cocks & Cows

The burgers at boutique chain Cocks & Cows are often declared the best in the city and it’s easy to see why. We dined at Cocks & Cows inside the stylish SP34 Hotel on our first night there and wolfed down a Cheese ‘n’ Smoke burger and The New Yorker, accompanied by Salt and vinegar fries.

The medium-cooked, flame-grilled burgers were fantastic and generously-sized and we liked the cosy clubhouse feel of the restaurant. It’s definitely the place to satisfy a serious meat craving or attempt The Governator – a burger packed with double everything!

Torvehallerne

One of my favourite spots in Copenhagen was Torvehallerne, a dazzling food hall in the central Nørreport area. It has everything you could hope to find – gourmet Danish smørrebrød at Hallernes, Asian street food by LêLê Street Kitchen, Grød posh porridge, craft beers at Mikkeller & Friends Bottle shop and Summerbird Chocolate.

On a particularly chilly lunchtime, we warmed up over a bowl of delicious home-made soup at Unplugged Juice and couldn’t resist a Cinnamon chocolate snegl from the magnificent Laura’s Bakery.

There are so many tempting foodie bites to try at Torvehallerne that you might want to bring a big bag and stock up for later.

Copenhagen Street Food

Like most major cities, street food is big news and it’s done particularly well at the purpose-built Copenhagen Street Food. Conveniently located on Paper Island next to Freetown Christiania, this indoor food market is packed full of trucks and kiosks offering gourmet bites from around the world.

You can find typical Danish hot dogs at Pølse Kompagniet, Belgian stews and duck-fat fries at Copper and Wheat, Brazilian grilled meat at Brasa and Korean Bulgogi at Bulko. What’s not to love?

Lagkagehuset & Holm

A trip to Copenhagen wouldn’t be complete without copious amounts of Danish pastries. Lagkagehuset (or Ole & Steen as it’s known in the UK) has a number of stylish bakeries across Copenhagen and is a good option for an affordable bite at any time of the day. We found the pizza slices a hearty and surprisingly indulgent choice for lunch. They should definitely be followed with something sweet like a delicious cinnamon social, chocolate rumball or a double chocolate chip muffin.

Holm Bager, next to the sleek Illum department store, has a very similar offering and does a great carrot and walnut milk bun and a giant cinnamon swirl smothered in vanilla frosting.

Other temples of pastry in Copenhagen include Meyers Bageri, Sankt Peders Bageri and Andersen Bakery – try and sample them all, if you can handle it.

Are you tempted by the Copenhagen food scene? Where are your favourite spots for eating out in Copenhagen?

Photos by Chérie City (interiors by Höst and Mother)

Copenhagen, Restaurants

Dinner at Höst Restaurant Copenhagen

March 14, 2017 by cheriecity

A big highlight of our trip to Copenhagen was dinner at the stylish and atmospheric Höst. While Copenhagen boasts a number of high end Michelin starred restaurants and radical neo-bistros, Höst offers affordable fine Nordic dining in a casual yet inspiring setting.

A part of the Cofoco restaurant group, which also includes Väkst at Hotel SP34 where we enjoyed breakfast, Höst is located in the hip Nansengade quarter and it had a buzzing neighbourhood vibe when we visited on a snowy Monday evening.

The restaurant, which means ‘harvest’ in Danish, offers a seasonal set menu of either three or five course, however, this undersells the experience somewhat as it there are many treats in between the courses that make for quite a substantial meal.

We went for the three course dinner menu and were swiftly presented a magnificent appetiser of Juniper-smoked scallop with walnut, sheep’s milk yoghurt, apples and coriander. Our waitress set alight some of the surrounding ferns inside a sea shell to evoke scents of the wilderness. The dish tasted just as beautiful as it looked. The cured scallop was tender and tangy, and was complemented by a fresh, velvety apple emulsion and a mild, snow-like texture from the yoghurt.

Next up was our starter – Baked cod with Jerusalem artichoke, lumpfish roe and fish fumée, which was ladled over the fish at the table. The baked cod was warm and succulent, lightly dusted in hay ash and topped with a generous amount of lumpfish roe (a mildly-flavoured caviar). The fish fumée finished it off nicely with a smoky flavour and pieces of soft artichoke.

A rustic boule of freshly-baked sourdough was served on a bed of dried grains and was paired with a gloriously light and whipped salted Danish butter. I tried not to disrupt the rhythm of the courses too much by filling up on bread, but Steven got stuck in, as it was just so tasty.

Before moving on to the land, we had one last taste of the sea with Poached octopus with ink and blue mussel soup with pickled pear, dill and cress. This dish, with delicate octopus ribbons, was packed full of sweet and sour flavours and the very creamy soup was plesantly cut through with tart little cubes of pear and plenty of grassy fresh green herbs. It was intriguing and characterful and just the right size to not overwhelm.

For our main course, we were treated to Beef sirloin from Grambogaard with beetroot, onions, cep mushrooms and tarragon. The medium-cooked fillet of beef was surprisingly large and ever so tender, topped with a slow-cooked cep mushroom and onion sauce, a nest of fresh beetroot ribbons and finished with a rich, meaty jus. I loved how the beetroot elevated it from a typically indulgent beef dish to something more vibrant and visually-pleasing.

We were offered a short break before dessert to really savour the experience and then it was on to a very special palate cleanser of Pear sorbet with lemon verbena, salted Skyr yoghurt and sugar beet syrup. Our tastebuds had been lulled into contentment with the main course and this pre-dessert jolted them back into action so abruptly that we both almost jumped out of our seats (in a good way).

The first flavour to hit was the salty, whipped yoghurt, which was swiftly countered with the sticky, sweet beet syrup at the bottom. The pear sorbet was juicy and mellow and the powdered lemon verbena added a fragrant taste.

Our final flourish was a dessert of Birch bark ice cream with herbal chocolate, pear and caramel. It may look a little ‘out there’ but it was very moreish – the ice cream had an earthy flavour and the white chocolate crumble was subtle with just a slight hint of caramel and pear cider purée.

Our meal at Höst was so memorable and impressive and while there are still so many Copenhagen restaurants on my list, I’m tempted to return and see what’s on the menu. It doesn’t require noma or Geranium levels of advance booking, but tables can get snapped up quickly – you don’t want to miss this one!

Photos by Chérie City and Höst

Copenhagen, Hotels

A Great Stay at Hotel SP34 Copenhagen

March 13, 2017 by cheriecity

Copenhagen is famed for laid-back style paired with cosiness and this was exactly what I wanted to experience on our first trip to the capital of Denmark. Hotel SP34 does Danish living really, really well with a forward-thinking approach to hospitality, as well as a few nods to convivial traditions.

Location

Part of the design-led Brøchner Hotels, the four star Hotel SP34 comprises three renovated townhouses on Sankt Peder Stræde in the charming Latin Quarter. It’s well-located for exploring Copenhagen and is within walking distance of the Tivoli Gardens, The National Museum of Denmark, shopping in the pedestrianised Strøget street and the leafy Ørstedsparken.

Arriving for Wine Hour

Conveniently, we arrived at Hotel SP34 in time for the daily Wine Hour and as you can imagine, the open-plan hotel lobby was buzzing with couples and friends sipping happily in front of the open fireplace – the epitome of hygge! The SP34 tends to attract an international, creative crowd and its hip lobby scene is a key part of its charm.

Check-in was quick and friendly and I couldn’t help admiring the staff’s stunning uniforms designed by cool Danish designer Stine Goya. After joining in the merriment with a warming glass of Port wine, we headed up to our Superior Double Room on the third floor.

The Room

The room was designed in a luxury bohemian style with furniture custom-made by Scandinavian designers. There were tones of wood and tan leather, moody grey walls, a jewel-like vintage pendant lamp (made specially for the hotel in Sweden) and a statement headboard with fun mini leather cushions. We also loved the typical Latin Quarter bay windows that offered a floor-to-ceiling view of the street below and added a touch of romance to the room.

The two twin beds were seriously comfy, with high quality white linen and proper pillows, as well as a large wall-mounted LCTV. It’s also worth noting that like all of the rooms, we had tea and coffee facilities with a selection of Pukka teas and there was also free high-speed wifi. The room didn’t have a refrigerator for drinks, however guests who book a suite can also enjoy an all-inclusive minibar concept in both the room and the lobby bar.

The bathroom had an urban monochrome feel with sleek white tiles, a powerful walk-in shower, concrete and metal units, fluffy towels and REN bathroom products (no conditioner though, so bring your own).

Burgers at Cocks and Cows

It’s a real treat having great restaurants in your hotel, especially after a day of travelling, and Hotel SP34 boasts three! Since we were having breakfast in Väkst in the morning, we went for gourmet burgers at the casual Cocks and Cows that has a few other locations in Copenhagen.

Its burgers are often named the best in the city and it’s easy to see why. My Cheese ‘n’ Smoke burger with bacon and Cheddar was so delicious with medium-cooked, flame-grilled beef, high quality toppings and tasty sauces. Steven went for the The New Yorker – flavourful and lean sliced chilli-garlic marinated steak inside a bun with aromatic tarragon mayo and creamy basil pesto. We shared a side of Salt & Vinegar Fries, which were golden and hand-chipped with the skin on, and more than enough for two.

Reeservations are essential, especially on a busy Saturday night, and once you’re in the service is super quick and friendly.

Breakfast at Väkst

In the morning, we were excited to have breakfast in Väkst, the beautifully-designed and highly-Instagrammable restaurant run by Copenhagen’s esteemed Cofoco restaurant group. It’s set across two floors with an indoor greenhouse and a staircase laden with plants – like a secret garden.

The organic breakfast was nicely put together by chefs in the open kitchen and while it was mostly Continental, there was the option to add hot items as extras. We feasted on freshly-baked croissants, apple and cinnamon cake, traditional rye bread with Danish salted butter, cold meats and yoghurt with fresh blueberries. It was a lovely way to start the day and we liked that over 90% of the items were organic and sourced locally.

Upon check-out we had the chance to see the lobby in the daylight and spotted some nice touches such as complimentary tea and coffee to take-out and a cabinet where you can buy high-end products and souvenirs.

Other interesting hotel features include an intimate 24-seater screening room with movie nights each evening as well as a seasonal rooftop terrace, the Din Nye Ven (Danish for Your New Friend) cafe-bar and a fitness room.

Hotel SP34 is an urban lifestyle resort with everything you need on your doorstep and is sure to appeal to design-conscious travellers who appreciate thoughtful touches and plenty of hygge. However, your head may also be turned by Brøchner Hotels’ latest property, the highly-anticipated Hotel Danmark opening in April. The hotels are less than ten minutes apart, so if you’re a curious hotel lover, why not try both? I know I will take any excuse to return to Copenhagen!

For more information and booking, visit: www.brochner-hotels.com

Chérie City received a press rate for a one-night stay at Hotel SP34

All photos by Chérie City