June 21, 2013 Lunch- Le Café Miche, Albuquerque’s new Danish Restaurant

June 21, 2013 Lunch- Le Café Miche, Albuquerque’s new Danish Restaurant

There is big news in Albuquerque’s fine dining world.  Claus Hjortkjaer, who owned and ran the highly acclaimed Café Miche on Wyoming in the Northeast Heights until five years ago, has re-opened Le Café Miche downtown at 228 Gold SW.  Some of the accolades that Klaus and Le Café Miche have garnered, include:

• Chef of the Year 2004 by the NM Restaurant Association
• Created wine lists that won the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence eight years in a row
• Rated best French restaurant in New Mexico by Zagat Survey of Southwestern Restaurants 10 years running
• Won Alibi  CHOICE awards for "Best French Restaurant", "Best Wine List", "Best Restaurant To Impress Your Dinner Companion” and more
• Earned a four-star rating by the Albuquerque Journal
• Favorable reviews by Local Flavor, Albuquerque the Magazine, Local IQ, ABQ the Bite and other local media.

     Claus was born and raised in Odense on the small island of Funen in Denmark, which is one of the oldest towns in Denmark, over 1000 years old  To give you an idea of its age, the town’s name in Old Norse means “Odin’s Shrine” (yes, it was a shrine to the Norse God, Odin).   Odense, the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, is a fairy tale town set in a fairy tale country.   Denmark, besides being a lovely part of the world, has a long and rich gastronomic tradition.  At Le Café Miche, I am happy to report that Claus is carrying on those uniquely Danish food traditions.  As Claus says it, “I guarantee you will not find food like this anywhere else in New Mexico.”

Examples of the unique Danish traditional foods Claus is referring to were found on the lunch menu when I visited Le Café Miche.  He started us out with “House made Rygeost cheese served on rugbrod with sliced leeks and radish”.   .  He started us out with “House made Rygeost cheese served on rugbrod with sliced leeks and radish”.   Rygeost is a farmer’s cheese made with buttermilk, rennet from Denmark and cow’s milk.  The ingredients are combined and allowed to stand at room temperature for 24 hours.  Then the curds are drained and placed in a cheeses cloth and solidified by swinging the bag of curds until the cheese becomes firm.  The cheese is topped with caraway seeds and plated with slices of small spring onions, watermelon radishes (white on the outside and red on the inside) and slices of rugbrod (dark dense Danish flat rye bread) smeared with Claus’ homemade special spread of duck fat and fried onions (animal fat is one of the oldest foods eaten in Scandinavia dating back to Viking days when animal fat was used like butter, especially in the winter).  Claus told us he uses a special trick to finish making the Rygeost that a Danish friend taught him, which is to smoke the cheese for three minutes over burning hay to give it a slightly hay-like, smoky flavor.  The cheese on the fat smeared rugbrod produced a very flavorful and balanced taste.  Spreading the Rygeost on the fresh white dinner rolls brought out its smoky aftertaste.  I liked it both ways.

Wayne Chew and Lisa Abeyta joined me for lunch, so I had the opportunity to taste several dishes. Wayne ordered the house made pate sandwich, which was served Danish style; a slab of pate served open faced on a slab of white bread garnished with an amazing sweet pickled gherkin just like the kind I ate in Denmark.

Wayne started lunch with a bowl of cream of mushroom soup, creamy with lots of slices of mushroom and infused with mushroom flavor; very French. 

 Lisa ordered the crab cakes salad.  Her crab cakes were small but almost entirely crab meat without much bread filling. We discussed crab cakes and agreed that the best ones we had eaten were in Baltimore.  Mine at a private tennis club my cousins took me to once and Wayne’s at Faidley Seafood at Lexington Market.  The recipe is almost the same, back fin lump crabmeat, a few bread crumbs for body and egg to bind it all together.  Claus’ were almost that good.

Wayne’s pate was somewhere between a Danish and a French style, more of a rillettes (Rillettes is a rustic pâté made from meat that's been poached in its own fat, then shredded and stored in some of that fat.) or a rustic style with some chopped meat and spices combined with the duck liver topped with a fried piece of bacon and fresh sunflower sprouts and sliced sautéed mushrooms and served with Danish Gherkins.  I have not eaten Danish sweet pickled gherkins since I lived in Denmark in 1968.  Claus’ are so unmistakably Danish. They triggered an immediate Déjà vu recollection of sitting at lunch in Copenhagen eating them on top of open faced sandwiches of liver paste.

The other Danish item that must be tried at lunch is the “Two kinds of house made herring served with potato salad and rugbrød”.  Claus makes his own herring.  He orders salted herring from Denmark and soaks it in milk for three days, then he soaks the herring in water for several says to leach the salt out of them and pickles the herring in seasonings and vinegar and sugar.  He had sold out of herring when we were at the restaurant, so I shall return.

Claus is a classically trained chef; a graduate of the Culinary Institute of Denmark with honors.  He knows and his menus reflect the years spent proving his competence as a chef of all cuisines, especially French Cuisine.  I remember planning a birthday party for my son twenty years ago at Claus’ chef’s table at Le Café Miche.  He and I discussed and organized a gourmet meal in a matter of minutes that was superb classical French Cuisine; featuring a Beef Wellington for ten as the main course and the same Duck Confit Salad that I ate for lunch today.  Thank goodness some things never change.   The duck confit salad features a braised leg quarter of duck confit laid on a salad of spinach greens.  I should mention that the salad dressing that was served on the salads was flavored with horseradish and if you do not like horseradish, you should ask for a substitute.

I must also mention that the top ranked restaurant in the world this year is Noma, located in Copenhagen and known for its field foraged foods.  Those two facts seem to have impressed and liberated Claus to embrace the simple but elegant foods of his native Denmark in his new incarnation of Le Café Miche.   

Foodies rejoice and enjoy Albuquerque’s newest fine dining restaurant, the return of one of Albuquerque’s great chefs and an opportunity to taste the wonderful food of Denmark.

Bon Appétit