Copenhagen

They ate at Copenhagen last Wednesday. Their Copenhagen is not the Danish capital. It is instead a posh restaurant in town, a modern and fairly recent vegan place that has become fashionable, sort of. The restaurant serves great food, and it is not too expensive. They certainly like the place and have dined there a few times already. Last Wednesday they noticed the chef has changed. The food they ate was still tasty and unconventional. However, they could already sense the restaurant anxiously facing the challenge to keep the high standards set by the chef they remember, a brilliant Japanese cook. For a start, the amount of Japanese choices in the menu has noticeably declined.

In Copenhagen space has always been an issue. Tables are almost touching, which is a bit of a nuisance. You are just too close to other people, to other conversations, you can sneak glances at the food other people order - you can't help not doing it. In turn, the neighbours on both sides of your table glimpse at your choices and a kind of absurd and concealed little competition starts so as to secretly decide who has ordered the most tempting and daring meals. It is indeed a bit of an inconvenience.

They dine out at Copenhagen because they love the food they serve but it seems that for a good deal of people eating there is a handy excuse to act oddly. You look around you and what you see and hear is people going about their doings and conversations in that artificial, half-eccentric manner so much stereotypically apt for such a posh and stylish place. Last Wednesday as usual they were surrounded by a large lot of great pretenders, pretending to show the rest how cool they are. Such an absurd behaviour, difficult to find at similarly trendy places elsewhere, only goes to show how unsophisticated their pretentious little town with their grandiloquent specimens really still is.