Sushi Anaba

About Sushi Anaba

Fifteen seats, one seating a night, 1,900 kroner before the pour. Sushi Anaba runs on the maths of restraint: chef Mads Battefeld apprenticed in Tokyo, came home to Copenhagen, and built a counter that does one thing in one direction. There is no à la carte, no second turn, no menu handed across the Douglas-fir. You sit, and the nigiri arrives in the order he decides.

The room earned a Michelin star and a place on the Opinionated About Dining top 100, and it remains among the harder reservations in the city. For the wider field, see our best sushi restaurants worldwide guide.

The Kitchen

Battefeld works Edomae-style, the Tokyo discipline of curing, aging and brushing rather than icing fish into submission. Tuna is aged; whitefish is kombu-cured; each piece of nigiri is brushed with nikiri soy at the counter and set down for you to eat within seconds, not minutes. The shari is warmer than the fish, seasoned with red vinegar, pressed loose enough to fall apart on the tongue.

The name nods to anago, the saltwater eel simmered until it needs no knife. The omakase moves through otsumami — small cooked and cured plates — before the nigiri run, and the seafood leans Danish and Norwegian, sustainable where the kitchen can source it. The set is 1,900 DKK; a wine pairing is 1,500 DKK, a sake-and-wine flight 1,300 DKK, and a non-alcoholic pairing 1,050 DKK. It reads expensive until you count the seats and the single turn that pay for the focus.

The Room

The counter seats fifteen along a pale Douglas-fir slab, and the room is built around it: low light, no music fighting the conversation, the only theatre the chef's hands. Sound stays at a hush — this is a place where you hear the knife. Dress is smart-casual; nobody will turn you away for arriving without a jacket, but the room rewards people who treat it as an occasion. Spacing is close by design, so you eat shoulder to shoulder with strangers who came for the same reason you did.