Magny

Pickles, cures, and a counter held close

Jonas Mikkelsen pickles and cures vegetables for use beyond garnish; as Chef at Magny in Copenhagen, he carries that habit into a 16-seat counter restaurant. Jonas Mikkelsen has described those preserved elements as flavor for ice creams, syrups, and the top of a dish, which says much about the way he builds a plate: acidity as structure, sweetness as seasoning, decoration with work behind it. His named formation runs through Hotel Frederiksminde in Præstø, where he was head chef and partner in 2010. That role asked for more than clean execution. A cook had to read the house, hold a point of view, and still serve the room in front of him. By 2012, Mikkelsen had received both the Nordic Challenge and Dish of the Year honors, and in 2016 Hotel Frederiksminde held a Michelin Star under his tenure there. Magny, opened in 2026, gives that earlier discipline a smaller field. The responsibility is now both chef and restaurateur, with the bench, the menu, and the room pulled into one tight frame.

A set menu with no spare seats

Magny’s clearest measure is the counter: 16 seats, a seasonal set menu, and a format that leaves little distance between the pass and the guest. The restaurant names turbot soup with caviar, morels and kelp, and pork with mustard and grilled lettuce among its dishes, a pairing of sea depth and charred green edge that suits Mikkelsen’s stated interest in preserved, flavored, and finished ingredients. The house describes the offer as seasonal rather than fixed, so the method begins with timing. A set menu gives the kitchen control over sequence, temperature, and pace; at a counter, that control becomes visible. Plates leave the hands quickly. Adjustments happen in the open. The wine program is curated, which matters in a room of this size because each pour has to sit beside the cooking rather than operate as a separate performance.

The room around the pass

The room at Magny is built for proximity. Its counter setting, modern and spare in feeling, puts the meal close to the open kitchen without turning the work into theatre. Conversation can stay low. The pace can stretch. In a 16-seat restaurant, the pass is not a distant line at the back of the room; it is part of the guest’s field of vision, a place where the hands matter because there is nowhere for the gesture to hide. That scale also changes service. A set menu in a larger dining room can become procession. Here it stays bench-side, dish by dish, with the counter holding the room in a narrower register. Magny’s minimalism is useful in that way. It clears space for the soup, the mustard, the grilled lettuce, the glass placed beside them.

Carrying Præstø into Copenhagen

What matters at Magny is not a borrowed school but a sequence of responsibility. Præstø gave Mikkelsen a house to run, awards arrived after time on the tools, and Copenhagen now gives him a smaller room in which authorship has fewer places to disperse. He has said he does not read cookbooks much, because too many chefs forget how to make their own food personal. At Magny, that conviction narrows to the counter, the set menu, and Jonas Mikkelsen.