Matt Orlando left Per Se, left Noma as head chef, and opened a restaurant in a decommissioned shipyard on an industrial island that most Copenhagen residents had never visited. That restaurant, Amass, would go on to define an approach to fine dining that the industry is still catching up with: the idea that sustainable cooking and exceptional cooking are not in tension but identical.
The Amass kitchen garden — an extensive growing operation attached to the restaurant — produces a significant portion of what ends up on the plate. What the garden cannot provide comes from a network of producers whose standards mirror Orlando's own. Waste is relentlessly minimised: spent grains from local breweries become bread; carrot tops become garnish; nothing leaves the kitchen unnecessarily. The result is a menu that changes not weekly but daily, responding to what is growing, what has arrived, and what the kitchen finds interesting that morning.
The warehouse space is the antithesis of fine dining's traditional formality. Long communal tables, warm lighting, a kitchen open to the dining room, and a courtyard where guests can gather before and between courses. The cooking is technically skilled and quietly beautiful: North Sea fish with fermented grains; heritage vegetables from the garden served raw, charred and pickled in the same plate; a dessert built entirely around a single berry in its peak moment. Amass is on the World's 50 Best Discovery list.
Getting to Refshaleøen requires some effort — a short ferry or a longer cycle — which means every guest arrives by choice. This self-selection creates a room full of people who are genuinely curious rather than merely dining expensively. The conversation is better. The energy is better. The meal is better for it.
