Scan Magazine | Culinary Feature | Restaurant Rudolf Mathis
Seafood, sun and sea Lunch in the sun at seafood restaurant Rudolf Mathis, located at the scenic harbour of Kerteminde, gives you the very best of Danish summer at the sea. With its towering white-washed walls, black beams and world-class seafood, the awardwinning restaurant has become a traditional summer destination for many Danes. By Signe Hansen | Photos: Rudolf Mathis
For more than 30 years, Puk Larsen, owner and head chef at Rudolf Mathis, has served guests from near and far, a delicious menu of fresh, local fish prepared according to classic French traditions. With the menu changing with the local seasons, guests visiting during spring and summer are likely to find lots of delicious seafood plates as well as plaice, straight in from Kerteminde harbour, on the menu. “We continuously change our menu to match the seasonal products. That’s what we’ve always done, and it means that in the summer we will be serving a wide range of dishes with seafood and fresh, local vegetables. We 54 | Issue 111 | April 2018
have a lot of small producers in the surrounding area,” says Larsen. With the restaurant’s terrace stretching out over the water, guests can enjoy the seafood alongside the fresh smell of the sea, the sound of the water quietly twirling underneath, and the view of the local fishing boats arriving into and departing out of the small harbour.
Fresh seafood With Kerteminde harbour on the doorstep, it is natural that Rudolf Mathis sources most of its seafood from the surrounding waters. And, as a matter of fact,
it was the location more than anything that determined the restaurant’s identity. “I’ve always preferred working with fish, but the fact that we ended up an actual seafood restaurant had a lot to do with the location. It took a long time to get permission to build and then construct the restaurant, and even before we were finished, people and media had begun referring to it as ‘the seafood restaurant’, and that has just stuck,” Larsen explains. The food is served in set menus of two to four delicious dishes for lunch and three to five courses for dinner, with an optional matching wine menu. Though most guests come for the whole menu, you can also choose to just have a main course with a glass of chilled white wine in the sun.
Teamwork Rudolf Mathis might be located in a sea of blue, but its success has come from