The Room
Owner and head chef Frederik Bille Brahe opened Apollo in 2017 inside the courtyard of Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the exhibition hall of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts on Nyhavn. By day it reads as a cafe; in April 2024 The New York Times Style Magazine documented how Bille Brahe turned the evening service into a destination dinner under the headline "A Beloved Copenhagen Cafe Gets Serious About Dinner."
The room itself is the draw: a courtyard ringed by the academy's ochre 17th-century facades, opened to the sky in summer when the outdoor tables run under the arches. Bille Brahe's 2024 cookbook, Apollo: State-of-the-art cooking and a party, is the first devoted to the restaurant.
The Food
The kitchen runs seasonal Danish produce through a Mediterranean lens. The evening menu changes with the deliveries, but the beef tartare dressed with piment d'Espelette and grapefruit is the dish regulars return for; alongside it sit vegetable-forward plates, a short list of pastas and whatever the day's fish allows.
The wine list tilts to natural and small-producer growers and the cocktails are short and considered. Apollo does not publish a fixed per-head price; the evening is a la carte and sits in the upper-mid Copenhagen bracket ($$$), with the courtyard noticeably more relaxed than the price tier suggests.
Best Occasion Fit
First Date: The courtyard at Apollo Bar is one of Copenhagen's most-cinematic first-date settings.
Birthday: Birthdays at Apollo Bar are warm, courtyard-led affairs the room handles with eleven years of practice.
Solo Dining: The indoor bar is an easy, unfussy solo seat, especially at lunch.
Not For
This is not the place for a guaranteed quiet, white-tablecloth proposal: the courtyard takes no reservations, the energy is loud and social, and on a sunny day you may wait for a table. Anyone who needs a fixed tasting-menu price agreed in advance, formal table service, or a hushed business setting should look to Copenhagen's starred dining rooms instead. Apollo rewards spontaneity, not certainty.
