Elite Traveler Summer 2023

Clockwise Jatako ff ers a Kitchen Counter dining experience; the menu o ff ersAsian fl avorsvia local ingredients; the restaurant’s atmosphere is intimate and welcoming

Jonathan Tam’s signature dish “We ran a dish for the fi rst year that was our interpretation of the Cantonese Hong Kong-style egg tart. I fi nd this dish shows how we work: I had this idea of a pastry that I used to get at Chinese bakeries, and I was telling my chefs about it. Some hadn’t had it; one of them had tried it in Singapore and another had tried something similar in London. Together we broke down the components and looked at how the Chinese made the fl aky pastry and how the English use fl aky pastry in their pies, and then together we came up with our own version.”

JONATHAN TAM JATAK, COPENHAGEN

“A lot of people put us in this frame of being a modern Chinese restaurant, but I really disagree,” he tells me. “That is my background, but we’re just trying to fi nd ways of sharing not just my culture and heritage, but also [that] of the rest of the team. It has become a cohesion where it’s done with local ingredients. Even when things sound like they’re from far away — maybe lemongrass or ginger — and people assume we’ve had it imported, we’re actually having it grown for us on local farms.” There are two types of experience at Jatak: Dining Room and Kitchen Counter. As you might expect, the Dining Room is strictly limited to guests in the main restaurant, while Kitchen Counter is served only to diners who have booked a coveted kitchen-front seat, no exceptions. Naturally, a seat at either is tricky to nab; be sure to book early. Both menus are tasting menu only, with limited descriptions promising a meal full of surprises. Despite the caliber of its chef and the culinary weight behind it, Jatak remains a relatively casual spot. “You’re literally in our space, in our kitchen,” Tam describes. “We want it to feel like guests are coming into our home. We have kids coming in to eat, we have elderly couples, young locals: We have everyone. We want to be welcoming and cozy — it’s detailed, but it’s not stu ff y and not pretentious.” This is the new, new-wave fi nedining. jatakcph.com

If Paris was the originator of haute cuisine, Copenhagen is home to the new vanguard of modern cookery. Of course, one name instantly comes to mind: Noma. René Redzepi’s generation-de fi ning restaurant stormed onto the scene in 2003, with its focus on foraged ingredients, hyper-seasonality and fresh fl avors proving that there was room for more than just one branch of fi nedining. While Noma has now announced its closure, Copenhagen continues to grapple with its legacy. Much of the city’s restaurant scene is in fi ltrated with its alumni, many of whom have gone on to become leading fi gures in their own rights. Among them is Jonathan Tam, a Canadian-born chef who began his Noma stint on the restaurant’s apprenticeship program before going on to be head chef at Christian Puglisi’s (also a Noma alum) Relæ for four years. In 2022, partly motivated by Relæ’s closure, and partly by an awareness that no other Copenhagen restaurants quite matched his style, Tam decided to go it alone and opened Jatak (pronounced yah-tak). “We were uncertain to begin with, as people were saying things like ‘ fi ne dining is dead, you need a pivot plan, you need to o ff er takeaway,’” Tam says. All doubts proved unfounded, and Jatak was awarded a Michelin star months after opening. Located in the outrageously cool (but a little rough-around-the-edges) suburb of Nørrebro, the restaurant maintains the principles of New Nordic Cuisine, but through a lens of Asian fl avors.

Photos Per-Anders Jörgensen, Natalie Black, Clay Williams Photo