The Guide

Twelve tables, twelve arguments.

Six full entries follow, written as field notes from the room.

Denmark · Copenhagen

Geranium

★★★

Rasmus Kofoed

Address

Per Henrik Lings Allé 4, 8th floor 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

On the eighth floor of a national stadium, with the trees of Fælledparken running to the horizon, Rasmus Kofoed serves a tasting menu built almost entirely from plants.

Chef

Kofoed is the only cook to have taken gold, silver, and bronze at the Bocuse d'Or.

The concept

The kitchen reads as a sustained argument for restraint.

What arrives is precise rather than ornate.

On the plate

A celery root baked in salted clay, served with a sauce of the leaves.

On the stars

Three stars recognise 'exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.' Geranium was the first Danish restaurant to hold three.

Italy · Modena

Osteria Francescana

★★★

Massimo Bottura

Address

Via Stella 22 41121 Modena, Italy

A small dining room behind an unmarked door in Modena, where Italian tradition is taken apart, looked at carefully, and put back together.

Chef

Massimo Bottura opened Osteria Francescana in 1995 and held three stars by 2011.

The concept

Bottura cooks the past in italics.

A second course is a single tortellino walking in a clear capon broth.

On the plate

An Eel Swimming up the Po. The five-cheese plate.

On the stars

Three stars for cooking that takes Emilian cuisine and pulls it forward without leaving it behind.

France · Paris

Arpège

★★★

Alain Passard

Address

84 rue de Varenne 75007 Paris, France

On rue de Varenne, in a small dining room of pear wood and Lalique, Alain Passard has spent twenty years quietly turning a three-star kitchen toward the vegetable.

Chef

Passard took over Arpège from his mentor in 1986 and won three stars by 1996.

The concept

The kitchen is built around the day's harvest.

The result is a cooking that pretends to be modest and is, in fact, ferociously ambitious.

On the plate

The salt-baked beetroot. A vegetable couscous from the Sarthe.

On the stars

Three stars, held since 1996 — one of the longest unbroken three-star runs in Paris.

Spain · Girona

El Celler de Can Roca

★★★

Joan, Josep & Jordi Roca

Address

Carrer Can Sunyer 48 17007 Girona, Spain

Three brothers, three disciplines — kitchen, cellar, sweet table — and a single dining room behind the family bar in Girona.

Chef

Joan cooks. Josep keeps the cellar of more than two thousand wines. Jordi makes the desserts.

The concept

The Catalan terroir runs through the menu — sea, mountain, forest.

A wine is paired not as accompaniment but as voice.

On the plate

The 'caramelised olive,' a single olive in a sugar shell, hung from a small bonsai.

On the stars

Three stars since 2009.

Sweden · Stockholm

Frantzén

★★★

Björn Frantzén

Address

Klara Norra Kyrkogata 26 111 22 Stockholm, Sweden

Three floors above Klara Norra Kyrkogata, in a townhouse that was once a private bank, Björn Frantzén serves a tasting menu drawn equal parts from Nordic produce and Japanese rigour.

Chef

Frantzén opened the original Restaurant Frantzén in 2008.

The concept

The first floor is a sitting room with an open fire and a glass of champagne.

The kitchen reads Sweden through the discipline of a kaiseki ryōtei.

On the plate

Toast Skagen, reworked. Roast pigeon brushed with juniper-fed butter.

On the stars

Three stars since 2018 — the first held by a Stockholm restaurant.

Austria · Vienna

Steirereck

★★

Heinz Reitbauer

Address

Am Heumarkt 2A, Stadtpark 1030 Vienna, Austria

In a glass pavilion at the edge of the Stadtpark, Heinz Reitbauer cooks an Austrian menu that runs from the country's lakes and forests through to its old farmstead pantries.

Chef

The Reitbauer family has cooked in Vienna since 1970.

The concept

The menu is read aloud by a maître d' from a small leather book.

Reitbauer cooks Austria with great seriousness.

On the plate

Char in beeswax. Tafelspitz reimagined.

On the stars

Two stars for what the inspectors call 'excellent cuisine, worth a detour.'

Also notable

Six tables we will return to.

Shorter notes on six further kitchens — visited, kept, and, where the kitchen is steady, recommended without reservation.

The Fat Duck

United Kingdom · Bray · ★★★

Heston Blumenthal's multisensory tasting menu in a 16th-century Berkshire pub.

Maaemo

Norway · Oslo · ★★★

Esben Holmboe Bang's Norwegian tasting room.

De Librije

Netherlands · Zwolle · ★★★

Jonnie and Thérèse Boer's restaurant in a fifteenth-century library.

Cheval Blanc

Switzerland · Basel · ★★★

Peter Knogl's classical French kitchen at Les Trois Rois.

Schwarzwaldstube

Germany · Baiersbronn · ★★★

A Black Forest dining room reopened in 2022 after fire.

La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise

Czech Republic · Prague · ★

Oldřich Sahajdák's reading of nineteenth-century Czech bourgeois cooking.