We are 167 miles from Copenhagen, nearing the westernmost edge of Denmark. The slim highway that leads here from Billund, the closest small city with an airport, delivers humdrum rural views at first. But soon it begins to cleave through boundless expanses of shimmering, sand-colored heath, tousled here and there by stiff sea breezes. This is the Jutland, the Danish peninsula shaped like a cinched-waist Wisconsin that in the north nods to Sweden and in the south borders Germany. A network of ferries and a couple of very long bridges connect the Jutland to Denmark’s other, smaller landmasses—tiny Funen next door and, farther east, Zealand, home to Copenhagen. As we approach the shores of the silvery North Sea, the water remains out of view, but we can sense it; the plush heath gives way to salt-weathered marsh grass and the wind kicks up. When Henne Kirkeby Kro appears by the side of the road, it does so suddenly and without fanfare, like a roadside motel.
Some 700 years ago, the king of Denmark decreed that royal staging posts, called kros, be established throughout the countryside for weary travelers in need of a meal and a bed. Many of these, built up through the eighteenth century, still exist: timber-framed, thatch-roofed fairytale cottages scattered across the Jutland like a constellation. Many still function as inns, serving traditional Danish food—meatballs, roasted potatoes, pickled beets—in lace-curtained dining rooms. But in the last decade, a few kros have undergone notably twenty-first-century makeovers.
Nørre Vissing Kro, a three-star lodge northeast of here in the Lake District, has a restaurant helmed by Morten Mygind, a chef known for his fierce commitment to Danish ingredients. Near it, similarly polished Tulstrup Kro serves a Nordic-heavy tasting menu in a candlelit dining room with shearling-draped chairs.
Henne Kirkeby Kro isn’t like any of those.
In 2003, René Redzepi opened Noma in Copenhagen. Within a few years he’d ushered in a new world order. The Nordic countries in general—and Copenhagen specifically—became the white-hot center of a food universe no longer ruled by Ferran Adrià and his liquid-nitrogen tanks at El Bulli, in Spain, but by Redzepi and his lacto-fermented plums at Noma.
British chef Paul Cunningham was present at the revolution, working 100-hour weeks at his own place, The Paul, in Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen’s landmark 1840s-era amusement park. The restaurant earned a Michelin star seven months after it opened, in 2003, and retained it for eight years, with Cunningham turning out inspired food anchored by Danish ingredients (langoustine, turbot, cabbage, wild fennel) but wrapped in French, English, and other culinary traditions. In 2011, a mentally and physically frayed Cunningham closed the restaurant. Shortly after, he was lured to the Jutland by his friend Garrey Dawson, former head chef at England’s legendary Fat Duck and now the director at Henne Kirkeby Kro.
“I looked at the place and it felt like home,” Cunningham says. In Henne Kirkeby’s huddle of handsome thatched-roof cottages, their small paned windows glowing like flames at night, the chef immediately saw the restaurant he’d create. “I envisioned a place that would feel like I was serving a meal in my own home,” he says, “a place where I could have my books on the shelves.” A place where a sprawling garden bursts with vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, berry bushes, and flowers flanked by beehives. A place where the nearby Wadden Sea teems with oysters, and Hvide Sande, the fishmon gering capital of Denmark, lies just up the coast.
The inn had been renovated a couple of years prior to Cunningham’s arrival, upgraded into pleasantly unfussy luxuriousness. The squat buildings dating from the eighteenth century retained their exterior charm, but on the inside, walls were painted white and floors redone in polished Douglas fir. One dining room got a vaulted ceiling, builtin shelves (whereCunningham’s wellworn cookbooks now reside), and an outsize window into the bustling kitchen. Guest rooms, of which there are 12 these days (7 were added with the new Hunters’ Lodge), are all contemporary elegance, heavier on creature comforts than on typical Scandinavian minimalism. Soft bed covers by Paul Smith cloak Hästen beds, and supple leathers swathe roomy Wegner chairs. The walls in the Hunters’ Lodge are hung with ethereal photographs by Copenhagen artist Astrid Kruse Jensen. Throughout the property, the landscaping remains deliberately sparse, mirroring the rugged heath, and the atmosphere is resolutely informal. Just as important, the food is unmistakably not New Nordic.
“I’m incredibly proud to be part of the Nordic food movement, but I travel far too much not to be inspired by flavors from other places,” says Cunningham. Even back in Copenhagen, he didn’t fully subscribe to the tenets embraced by Redzepi and his acolytes, which see chefs working solely with ingredients grown and foraged on Scandinavian soil. Cunningham, by contrast, is as happy to pair an Indian spice like vadouvan with a Danish crustacean, or miso with crudo, or to serve lobster Thermidor or steak au poivre without a single twist. And on Fridays, the highlight of lunch at Henne Kirkeby is fish-and-chips.
“At this point, the only dogma I have is to use what we’ve got,” says Cunningham, who cures his own bacon using pork from Grambogård, a farm on the island of Funen. He makes his own Cumberland sausage for the breakfast spread because Danish sausage isn’t his favorite. The kitchen bakes eight types of bread every day, using grains ground at a mill just down the road.
Take a wander through the Henne Kirkeby garden, poke your head into the greenhouse, and you’ll find ropes of garlic in the midst of a long ferment, bundles of herbs drying, perhaps seedlings incubating beneath bell jars. If you’re studying the controlled chaos of the flower beds, you might meet grandmotherly Helen Momme, who bears the basket of warm breads, yogurt, jams, and cured meats offered to you at breakfast each morning, and later furnishes your dinner table with vases of nasturtiums, cosmos, and the odd leafy beet. Stroll farther and, at the smoker behind the kitchen, a sous chef in whites may be doctoring some oysters.
Dinner is a good time at Henne Kirkeby, particularly in the A-frame dining room by the kitchen. It opens with a parade of house-made marvels arranged on wooden slabs: tart, olive-size green peaches; aged duck, bresaola-like and earthy, with pickled carrot and orange zest; a fat slice of bacon with cacao mustard. There will be bread called Keith Moon, for the music that was playing when its starter was conceived; it’s a headily fragrant boule with herbs baked into the bot tom, served with tangy butter churned an hour before service. There will be something from the Wadden Sea, almost certainly oysters—we also had poached Danish lobster in a tomato consommé that haunts us still—and tender red cabbage with beef marrow and a heap of shaved summer truffles that managed not to be too much. Whatever dinner is, it won’t be a reverent experience: There will be Paula Abdul songs coming from the kitchen, and Garrey Dawson will expound on the wine only if you ask.
“Henne Kirkeby Kro is an inn,” Cunningham says after dinner one evening. “We want every one to be able to come here: two overweight businessmen looking for steak frites, a couple of ladies having a moan about their boyfriends on a Friday night. It’s a place to rest your head and quench your thirst and satisfy your appetite.” But on the walk back to your room under the starry Danish sky after a long and happy dinner, with Henne Kirkeby’s sheep bleating quietly in the darkness, it’s hard not to feel like it’s a little more than that.
WHEN TO GO
Mid-May through early October is the best time to visit the Danish coast. Winters here are unforgiving; Henne Kirkeby Kro closes in mid-December and reopens in late March. Note that the inn is open only Wednesday through Saturday.
GETTING THERE
The closest airport to Henne Kirkeby Kro is Billund, an hour’s drive away. There are no direct flights from the U.S., but it is reachable via several European cities, including Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Paris. Or you can fly to Copenhagen and drive across the country—it’s a three-hour, off-and-on-scenic trip to the inn.
AND WHILE YOU’RE THERE . . .
If Henne Kirkeby Kro is a magical little corner of the earth, Fanø—30 miles south as the gull flies—is another world completely. Reachable by ferry from the mainland port of Esbjerg, it’s part of the Wadden Sea Islands, an archipelago that stretches from the Netherlands into western Denmark. Fanø’s thatched-roof cottages are uniformly unmodern, its roads occupied by more bicycles than cars. On the southern tip of the island is Sønderho Kro, founded in 1722 and only lightly touched by the passage of time. Chef Jakob Sullestad, who co-owns the inn with Charlotte Eliasson Tønder, is meticulous about traditional Danish food. Lunches here are sumptuous spreads of pickled beets with grainy mustard; smoked salmon with cucumber, sour cream, and dill; an earthy, herbaceous terrine of lamb; Danish cheese; and rosé or cold bottles of Fanø beer. Afterward, you can join the families strolling along the seaside path that winds from the inn to the village of Sønderho, watching children running up and sliding down the dunes.