Where should I eat in Copenhagen, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Smørrebrød is the fixed point. It is built on rugbrød, a dense sour rye, and eaten open-faced with a knife and fork, and the combinations are named rather than improvised — pickled herring, roast pork with red cabbage, breaded plaice, liver pâté with bacon and mushrooms. Lunch is when it is served; it is not an evening dish, and ordering it at night marks you out.

The 2004 manifesto set out commitments to seasonality, Nordic raw materials and regional producers, and it is the reason the city's kitchens lean on sea buckthorn, root vegetables, cured fish and fermentation rather than imported luxury ingredients. It reshaped what the word "Nordic" means on a menu, and the effect reaches well past the handful of famous restaurants into ordinary bistros.

For cheese, ask for Danablu, registered in the EU quality schemes as a Protected Geographical Indication in class 1.3, cheeses. It was first entered in the register under Commission Regulation (EC) No 1107/96, and a substantial amendment to its specification was approved on 18 March 2013 by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 269/2013. It is a cow's-milk blue, sharper and saltier than the French blues it was built to compete with.

On the drinking side, Copenhagen is where brewing became a laboratory science. Carlsberg was founded in Valby in 1847 by J.C. Jacobsen, and in 1883 Emil Christian Hansen, working at the Carlsberg Laboratory, isolated a single pure strain of brewing yeast — the method that made consistent lager possible worldwide. The laboratory published the technique rather than patenting it.

A plate of smørrebrød arrives as separate, finished objects rather than a shared spread: each slice of rye is already loaded, garnished and sized to be eaten in sequence, so the table fills up with small complete dishes instead of platters to pass.

Danablu's PGI status protects the name, not the style, so blue cheeses made elsewhere in a similar way cannot be sold as Danablu but can taste close. If you want the registered product, read the label rather than the counter sign. The same logic applies to the Nordic label on menus — the 2004 manifesto is a set of principles with no certification behind it, so "New Nordic" is a claim about intent, not a protected term.

• Lunch — Smørrebrød on rugbrød, ordered by its named combinations; this is the meal where the tradition is strongest.
• Afternoon — A pølsevogn sausage wagon for the cheapest hot food in the city, eaten standing.
• Evening — The seasonal, fermentation-heavy cooking that followed the 2004 manifesto, which is where Copenhagen's reputation was made.

Denmark is outside the eurozone and uses the Danish krone, so a Copenhagen food budget does not convert directly from a eurozone leg of the same trip. Tasting-menu restaurants in this city release seats well ahead, and the New Nordic emphasis on seasonality means a menu built on spring shoots or autumn roots is genuinely unavailable out of season rather than merely different.

Read the Copenhagen things-to-do answer in this group for the museum and palace visits to slot around these meals, and the Denmark food question for the regional dishes that never reach the capital's menus.