Single-handedly upending Copenhagen's formal, Francophile dining scene, Café Ketchup imposed a revolutionary template when it opened in 2001. One of Torben Olsen's original bistros, this double-decker, chandelier-dripping entertainment complex combined restaurant, café, lounge, and after-hours club, just off the Strøget on Pilestraede. Olsen has since moved on, and is now pouring his energies into newer Café Victor (Ny Østergade 8; 45-33-13-36-13; www.cafevictor.dk) and Quote, but Ketchup still makes a perennial bid for king of hipsterdom. The local café society collects in the bar area before descending to the restaurant proper, where the kitchen turns out seriously good juniper berry–smoked pheasant breast with hazelnut emulsion and apple and plum trifle. Just as good: Ketchup's second (seasonal) Vesterbrogade location, which has a softer, more whimsical burnish in keeping with its location in Tivoli Gardens (Vesterbrogade 3; 45-33-75-07-55; www.cafeketchuptivoli.dk; open April–Sept).

Closed Sundays.

This young restaurant and its equally young chefs—Rune Jochumsen and Kristian Møller—snatched up a Michelin star surprisingly fast in 2004. The subterranean stone dining room in Frederiksborg resembles a mausoleum and the adamantly stiff kitchen want to put the "a" back into Formel. Finding their passion in restrained, French-accented classicism and the most aristocratic Danish ingredients, Jochumsen and Møller may jump from langoustines with crunchy baby vegetables to a French pigeon breast anointed with foie gras and black truffles. For the blow-the-pension six-course menu, they seem determined to slip foie gras into every other dish, but when the result is their classic brill paired with ethereal foie gras ravioli, the tab becomes an afterthought.

Closed Sundays.

Trailing a serious pedigree, including a stint at the Michelin-starred restaurant The Paul and a four-year stay in Bangkok, chef and owner Henrik Yde determined that his own kitchen would showcase the purity of sour, salty, and sweet flavors that intermingle in Thai coconut soup. Forget, in other words, your standard red curry and rice. Fittingly, Kiin Kiin's double-decker dining room sits in the middle of the multicultural, if increasingly trendy, Nørrebro neighborhood. The ground-floor lounge—the place to pop homemade pork skins and fried lotus roots—is fitted with the Panta Group's bamboo-and–water hyacinth Noodle Chairs. Upstairs in the dining room, gold-leaf Buddhas watch over the service of Yde's six-course tasting menu. Yde strikes every signature note of Thai cooking—from the tart splash of lemongrass and lime juice on scallops and shrimp, to the sour complexity of the soy, ginger, and garlic dressing on his toss of chicken and cashews. Denmark, though, never gets lost in the mix: Seafood dishes rely on the North Sea daily catch, and the lemongrass and baby corn are grown by a Danish farmer just 50 miles outside of Copenhagen.

Closed Sundays.

Sitting just off the busy Strøget pedestrian street but inhabiting a hushed, quaint parallel universe, this venerable tearoom and cake shop is the epitome of Danish hygge (which translates loosely as coziness). Its window display—maybe the most photographed attraction in Copenhagen, next to the Little Mermaid—stops foot traffic, and the marble-topped tables inside are occupied by grandmothers treating their saucer-eyed grandchildren. Start the sugar rush with wienerbrød (Americans know it as a Danish), a buttery pastry that's so flaky it makes every other Danish look like a spongy loofah. Many of the cakes are named after great Danes: The Karen Blixen (a.k.a. Isak Dinesen) is a caffeinated gothic tale in itself, told in layers of chocolate sponge, mocha truffle, roasted hazelnuts, and coffee mousse; the H.C. Andersen cake mixes lemon mousse and raspberry butter for an apt approximation of the writer's sweet-and-sour, lovelorn life. The popular sports cake is piled so high with whipped cream it looks like foam night in Ibiza.

Closed Sundays from Easter through September; open daily the rest of the year.

By forgoing hipster aspirations and blasting music for a very Danish mix of unaffected stylishness and coziness, this bistro near Amalienborg Palace has become like a second living room for neighborhood regulars. The talented kitchen serves up new Danish cuisine, but never takes itself too seriously (no dehydrated lingonberries, in other words). And while the black-and-white interior isn't extravagant, neither are the prices: For $35, you could tuck into cured Norwegian salmon dressed in frothy lemon mayo, minced veal and pork meatloaf bundled in bacon, and a bowl of garden-fresh plums with vanilla ice cream. If the perennially crowded restaurant is booked, stroll to the Christiansborg neighborhood and try sister kitchen Den Anden—the name translates, with Madklubben's characteristic directness, to The Second One (www.denanden.info).

Open 5:30 pm to midnight Mondays through Saturdays.

For many purists, the artistry and soul of contemporary Danish cooking begins and ends with Noma, considered one of the best restaurants in the world. Chef René Redzepi, who trained at those twin peaks of contemporary dining, French Laundry and El Bulli, painstakingly forages the complete Nordic harvest, from golden sea buckthorn to woodruff. He might pair Greenland shrimp with crisped potato skins, dill, and buttermilk powder; serve Danish Jersey beef flank with caramelized apple and sliced Gotland beets; or scoop an entire ecosystem onto a dessert plate by matching up local sheep's-milk mousse with an emerald-green granita composed of the garden sorrel those sheep grazed on. In his hands, something as homely as the rye kernel can look as gorgeous as a Perigord truffle. The setting itself—a converted historic warehouse beside the harbor that once stored whale fat—is a study in Nordic pride, with exposed brick, a heavily beamed ceiling, and sheepskin throws blanketing the backs of the '60s Scand chairs.

Closed Sundays.

Constantly packed with everyone from art students to investment bankers, Quote's buzzy success has less to do with its location, right on the central Kongens Nytorv, than with its stress on a perfected menu of global Danish brasserie food. The café and restaurant turn out a succession of glossy dishes, from sweet Nordic shrimp and scallops stuffed inside oversize ravioli purses to a grilled beef tournedos finally reunited with its sorely missed throwback, béarnaise sauce. Not that the requisite touches of Olsen drama are totally missing. Hanging above all those piled plates in the café are two epic-size crystal globes, simulating upscale disco balls, and in the restaurant proper, Venetian glass chandeliers add a pastel, baroque shimmer to the standard-issue Danish modern decor.

Copenhagen's Noma was recently ranked the world's best restaurant—so it's no wonder that the city's hottest table is the brainchild of Noma expats. Just over a year ago, Christian Puglisi and Kim Rossen left their posts as sous-chef and waiter, respectively, at René Redzepi's acclaimed restaurant to open Relæ. Expect rigorously seasonal pared-down dishes like broccoli with parsley puree or veal hearts with pepper sauce, fare that admirer Iniki Aizpitarte describes as "both frank and singular. Relæ has a real culinary culture, a true cuisine d'auteur that is dynamic like Puglisi's personality" (prix fixe, $60).

Must eat: Pickled mackerel with shaved cauliflower and lemon peel puree.

A collaboration of Danish artists, light and textile designers, acoustic experts, and scenographers turned this 18th-century pavilion in the Frederiksberg royal gardens into a nature diorama that's as much art installation as restaurant. Insects and wildflowers decorate woven wall hangings, color-changing crystals hung from the ceiling simulate the passage of the sun, and a playlist of thunder and chirping birds blends with chatter from the fashion mavens who dine here. Chefs Jakob Mielcke Hansen and Jan Hurtigkarl add their own naturalist ode with a prix fixe menu. We sampled wild duck served two ways (over rhubarb compote and paired with turnips and chanterelle mushrooms), but the menu perpetually evolves with the chef's whims. Hansen and Hurtigkarl close the restaurant from January through March to give themselves time for "inspirational culinary traveling."

Open Wednesdays through Sundays noon to 4 pm and 6 to 10 pm, April through September; Thursdays through Saturdays 6 to 10 pm, October through December.

After seriously contemplating the Nordic root vegetable at Noma, chef Mads Refslund is foraging farther afield to pull together three, five, and seven-course tasting menus at Restaurant MR. This isn't fusion, though: It's a restrained brand of culinary border-hopping, to Spain, Italy, and southern France. Refslund dresses sweetbreads with roasted parsnips, wild garlic, and morel sauce, and pairs oysters with apples and celery. In his signature dessert, the chef co-opts farmhouse-favorite Danish beer-and-bread pudding (in Refslund's hands, organic beer from North Jutland) and tops it with a flamboyant, feathery mound of white-chocolate foam. Inhabiting three stories of a historic townhouse in the city center, Restaurant MR's quietly masculine dining room—all square-backed chairs and whitewashed walls—doesn't hint at Refslund's break for freedom.

Closed Sundays.

Smørrebrød translates as "open-face sandwich," but once you have piled shrimp on top of crayfish and crowned it with caviar, it hardly deserves such a homely name. Typical Danish attention to detail and aesthetics have made this farmhouse fare the country's signature dish—and it's still the only lunch many natives will eat. Slotskælderen Hos Gitte Kik is a timeless model of a smørrebrød restaurant. Just across the canal from Christiansborg Palace, it resembles a country cottage with buttery-yellow stucco walls hung with photos of turn-of-the-century local wrestlers. All of the daily sandwiches line a long wooden buffet table so you can choose: Local favorites include a creamy liver pâté topped with crisp bacon, and classic smoked eel and buttery scrambled eggs (Fortunstraede 11 4; 45-33-11-15-37; lunch only; closed Sundays, Mondays, and all of July). More touristy but just as delectable is Ida Davidsen. Each day, Ida herself pops up behind her display of sandwiches with a signature toque riding high on her perennially blond waves. Her best concoctions include the Alexandra, a pile of raw salmon, salmon roe, six crayfish tails, and—because a sandwich can never be too rich or too fat—the final flourish of a dill sprig, and OK, some more roe. For the brave there's Cook's Midnight Snack, a melee of salami, mayo, grated radish, chives, smoked cheese, and black-currant jam (Store Kongensgade 70; 45-33-91-36-55; www.idadavidsen.dk). Not enough? If the sun is shining, head to Nyhavns Faergekro for smørrebrød alfresco at tables along the Nyhavn inlet, or duck inside for the most extreme of Nordic feasts: a smorgasbord of ten different herring preparations (Nyhavn 5; 45-33-15-15-88; www.nyhavnsfaergekro.dk).