Andersen Bakery

Wienerbrød by way of Hiroshima

The pastry case is Danish, but it reached Copenhagen the long way round. Andersen Bakery belongs to the Japanese Andersen Group, whose Danish story began with a 1959 trip to Copenhagen by its founder, who met Danish pastries at breakfast, spent three years learning how they were made, and took the technique home to Japan in 1962. The group grew out of a postwar Hiroshima bakery and took its name from Hans Christian Andersen, fairy tales and the idea that daily bread can lift an ordinary day. A Copenhagen shop opened in 2008 for the group's 60th anniversary, which made the city something like a homecoming. What that produces now is a counter bakery built on wienerbrød, laminated pastry, bread, cakes and coffee rather than a restaurant format.

Queue, read the case, choose

A visit works as a bakery stop rather than a sit-down meal: join the line, study the display, take pastries or a loaf, then either sit for a moment or carry the box onward. The rooms are small and plainly Scandinavian, with limited seating inside, a few tables outside and a golden pastry display doing the selling. Staff move people through the queue quickly, switch languages easily and will point you at something when the cases are busy. Mornings bring a mix of locals, visitors, families and people on their own. Coffee comes in a real cup if you stay, which is the argument for staying.

Start with cardamom, then choose your fruit

Take the cardamom bun first, then read it against the cinnamon roll, the almond croissant, the spandauer and the rhubarb custard croissant. The wider case runs to multi-layered chocolate croissants, crunchy brunsviger, pistachio squares, salty chewy cookies, cream-filled pastries, raspberry jam pastries under pink icing, Japanese-influenced cakes and a vegan mango chocolate cake. The strength is the inherited method: Danish technique, careful lamination, butter that shatters, fillings that lean nostalgic rather than experimental. Coffee is part of the order rather than an afterthought, with cappuccino and iced coffee alongside the croissants and cinnamon rolls, and leaf teas for anyone skipping it. Build the visit as a run of single choices: one laminated classic, one fruit or nut filling, coffee to hold it together.