a little visit to eat food in torvehallerne market | copenhagen.

I think one of my better moves this year was to book a walking tour around Copenhagen which finished at Torvehallerne, Copenhagen's pretty fancy food market. My Dad is convinced I'd already been to the food market the last time I went to Copenhagen, but as that was ten years ago I couldn't remember going at all. Also, Torvehallerne has completely changed since then and looks pretty fancy now. For a start, it's now under cover which was pretty handy considering how cold it was when we were in Copenhagen in November and also, it's now set in two different buildings which follow a vague theme of having sweet in one building and savoury in another. Also, unlike Borough Market, it's all shiny and new and made of glass. I'm not saying one is better than the other - Borough Market has a certain kind of charm and Torvehallerne seems all bright and Scandi. 

I've mentioned before on this blog how I'm a bit of a sucker for a food market and I think it would have been wrong to miss this one even though our trip to Copenhagen wasn't very long. It's not the cheapest food market you'll ever come across, and you probably are paying off for the glass buildings and the "squeaky cleanness" of the buildings - but at the same time, Denmark isn't the cheapest country you'll ever visit either, so you just have to kind of pick up and accept it. 

There are over 60 stalls packed into Torvehallerne and one of the only downsides to the market is that when you're travelling on hand luggage only, you can't possibly buy everything you really want to and get it home! We spent a while wondering between the two buildings working out what we wanted to eat, and then back again. There was an incredible amount of choice. 

In the end, we did what all good tourists in Copenhagen do, and settled with joining the massive queues to have some smørrebrød, which we had been told to try over and over again before we went to Denmarket. Smørrebrød are basically open topped sandwiches, consisting of a dark rye bread with various toppings added on the top. Hallernes was the stall we picked ours from, and it was hard to miss being one of the only stalls which had an added queue system in place and a flood of tourists surrounding it. There were quite a few different sandwiches to choose from. I ended up going with chicken (I think?!) but I could have had pretty much any sandwich combination you can think of. They were pretty tasty, and even though it was insanely toursity, I've always thought that things are popular for a reason. 

Afterwards, we headed outside to have a look at all the flowers which were on offer. I started to wonder whether it would have been nice to have Borough Market and Columbia Road combined back in London, before I realised just how much of an utter bum fight that would be. Chaos. There were some pretty wintery displays already out for early November and I've never actually seen so much lavender in one place before (I missed out on the whole lavender farm thing) and it smelt bloody gorgeous. 

Afterwards, deciding we weren't happy with just sandwiches, we went back inside and found a stall which served egg wraps and honestly some of the best tomato soup I've ever had. I don't know whether it was just the best because I was freezing and it did a pretty good job of warming me up or what, but I think I might still think about that soup a little bit even now. I wish I could remember the name of the stall that did the egg wraps and soup because they were amazing, but I can't, although I do know that they served a whole range of Paleo food - so if that's your thing you wouldn't go too far wrong by heading there. 

Also deserving of a special mention is The Coffee Collective, which has one branch in Torvehallerne. The Coffee Collective work to a Direct Trade model, where their aim is to try and get Kenyan coffee growers the same status as a wine grower in France. It means that they pay their coffee producers 25% more than the fair trade price and visit them once a year. Who could argue with that? 

So give Torvehallerne a chance if you're ever in Copenhagen. It's easy to get to, right by Nørreport station and it really is pretty much the perfect place to grab lunch on a weekend break.