Kaf

Sourdough fermentation runs the pastry case

Everything at this Nørrebro counter starts with fermentation. Kaf is a plant-based café and patisserie that bakes in house and builds its pastry around natural fermentation, so the case carries sourdough fermented pastries baked daily and rotated with the season rather than a fixed list repeated all year. What is there in February will not be what is there in July.

The sweet side widens from there into cutting cakes, house-made vegan cheesecakes and raw vegan cakes, so a visit can be built on slices as easily as on laminated pastry. Savoury runs through sourdough bread buns, avocado buns and sandwiches, with brunch and lunch plates keeping the kitchen busy past the morning. The thread through all of it is plant-based comfort food that never turns the place into a restaurant.

Oak trees, a Nørrebro street, and no hurry

The setting does real work. Kaf sits on a relaxed street in the middle of Nørrebro with seating under oak trees as well as inside, which sets a neighbourhood pace: pastry and coffee at a table, a brunch bun, a slice of cake, or a longer sit over the bakery case. It is an informal, walk-in room and reads that way.

Coffee is not incidental to that. Kaf pours coffee from Saftig, a Copenhagen specialty roastery, and treats the drinks as chosen to sit alongside the pastry rather than as a default cup. The house does not name origins or brew recipes, so the useful thing to hold onto is the pairing logic: a local roaster’s coffee against fermented pastry, cakes, buns and plant-based daytime plates.

Order around the fermentation

The most representative order is the one that shows the fermentation: a sourdough fermented pastry from the daily bake, whatever the season has pushed into it. Add a slice from the cutting cakes for the patisserie side, or the house-made vegan cheesecake, which is the item the kitchen is best known for among its plant-based cakes. Raw vegan cakes sit in the same part of the counter, so the sweet order can move between fermented pastry, cake slice and cheesecake without repeating itself.

For savoury, go to the sourdough buns, the avocado bun or a sandwich, especially at brunch or lunch when coffee and cake is not enough. Pair whatever you choose with the Saftig coffee, which is the drink the house has built its counter around. Read Kaf as an in-house plant-based bakery café: natural fermentation, a seasonal pastry rotation, buns, cakes and specialty coffee working as one programme.