Some evenings stay with you. Because everything was perfect, the atmosphere, the food, the drink, the company landed at exactly the same moment. Our evening at Koan was one of those.
Koan sits along the waterfront at Langeliniekaj in Østerbro, inside the historic Langelinieskuret building. Two Michelin stars, opened in 2023 and already one of the most talked about restaurants in Scandinavia. Behind the kitchen stands Kristian Baumann, adopted from South Korea and raised in Denmark. It is his personal journey that has shaped Koan’s DNA: Korean techniques and flavour universes meeting Nordic ingredients.
The Menu built for the evening
We sat down at a table with a direct view into the open kitchen. No distance you sit and watch the team work. That is deliberate. Baumann does not want a theatre with a curtain; he wants guests to understand that what they are eating was made by hands and with precision, not sleight of hand.
This evening was not simply a visit to Koan. The kitchen had sat down and rethought the menu from the ground up. The starting point was Koan’s own signature dishes the ones that already carry the restaurant’s DNA the Korean-Nordic flavour combinations, the meticulous work with fermentation and umami as a guiding principle. But from there, the team had built further, adapting each element to play directly against the flavour profile of Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami. The smoky, the salty, the full-bodied the whisky’s character was not an accompaniment to the food; it was a parameter in the composition itself.
The result was a menu that existed only this one evening. Dishes that knew each other and knew what was in the glass. Caviar ran through it as a common thread, not by accident, but because caviar and umami whisky share a flavour language that neither needs to explain. You simply feel it.
Service was professional without being stiff. Everyone at the table whoever brought a dish knew the story behind it. That is not a coincidence.
Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami – Whisky as a gastronomic argument
Midway through the evening, something unusual happened. Mikael Lundén from Diageo took the floor.
He presented Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami a limited edition created in collaboration between Diageo’s Master Blender Emma Walker and three-Michelin-starred Japanese chef Kei Kobayashi of Paris. The premise behind the whisky is simple and ambitious in equal measure: to capture umami in liquid form.
Only one in 25,000 casks possesses the character that qualifies for this blend. The result is a whisky with notes of blood orange, red berries, smoked meat, salt and pepper and a long, sweet fruit finish.
But what Mikael Lundén explained that evening went beyond tasting notes. He drew a direct line to what we had just eaten: umami as the fifth taste the one that rounds, that fills, that gives an aftertaste its substance. Caviar is umami. Fermented Korean sauces are umami. Peated whisky from coastal distilleries is umami. This was not a sales pitch it was a lesson in flavour.
The recommendation: ice cold, served with caviar. We tried it. It works. The whisky opens up, the caviar amplifies. These are not two products sitting next to each other they lift each other.
Why It Works
There is something about Koan that cannot be directly replicated. It is not the concept Korean-Nordic cuisine is not a new idea. It is not the stars, even though two Michelin stars at opening is historically rare. It is that Kristian Baumann is clearly cooking food he himself wants to eat. It tastes like conviction.
The pairing with Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami was compelling for the same reason because it was not a stunt. Umami as a flavour profile connects the food and the whisky at a level that genuinely makes sense.
These are the kinds of evenings that remind you that food and drink, at their best, are not two separate categories.
Koan, Langeliniekaj 5, 2100 Copenhagen Ø — koancph.dk Tasting menu: 15 courses / DKK 3,600 per person
Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami — limited edition, available at
/Invited
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