2_1_ScanMag_80_Sep-Oct_2015_Q9_Scan Magazine 1 15/09/2015 19:39 Page 108
Scan Magazine | Restaurant of the Month | Denmark
Restaurant of the Month, Denmark
Intimate, heartfelt dining in the middle of Aarhus After years of honing their skills as chefs at a top restaurant in Aarhus, Kristine Rødbro and Michell Nielsen jumped at the chance to fulfil their shared dream of opening their very own restaurant when premises became available on Vesterbro Torv. The result was Restaurant Møf, known simply as Møf to friends and regulars, and after three months of hard work refurbishing and drawing up a menu, Rødbro and Nielsen were ready to show diners what they were capable of. “We wanted to create a place where it felt like the guests were visiting us at home,” Rødbro says. “We wanted to offer exciting food in chilled-out surroundings, and to share the cooking process with guests.” By Louise Older Steffensen | Photos: Erik Zappon
The pair hit it off professionally from the get-go, discovering that their culinary tastes and dreams for the future were highly compatible. “As employees in different restaurants, we always had to adhere to certain culinary traditions of, say, classic French cuisine,” Nielsen explains. “We both had a strong interest in taking the best of different culinary traditions
108 | Issue 80 | September 2015
and mixing various preparation methods and ingredients into new, exciting combinations.” Today, they describe their culinary style as “international with a focus on Danish seasons”. While they might serve classic fish or meat cuts, they will look beyond the standard accompanying fries to find more
exciting seasonal produce and combinations to perfectly fit the dish, such as fennel, chanterelles or blackcurrant. Coming up with the perfect flavour combination can take weeks, but it is a process they savour. The essence of Møf “Back at our old job, we’d share our concoctions with each other, and we developed this principle that if something was good, we’d go back and keep working on it until it was great,” Rødbro explains. “When we then reached a stage where we thought we really had a winner, we’d bestow the highest praise upon each other: ‘This is møf!’” ‘Møf’ (pronounced ‘meuf’), meaning ‘yummy’ or ‘nom’, became the obvious choice of name when Nielsen and Rødbro finally opened their own restaurant. By that time, they had a very clear