THE NEW NORDIC food charge may be spearheaded by three-time world restaurant of the year Noma, but chefs Bo Lindegaard and Lasse Askov have kicked off an inventive, interactive, fun culinary revolution all of their own with I’m a Kombo.
We’re about to enjoy what the guys call the Social Act. It’s being held in their new workspace. Pre-dinner prosecco in small bottles with straws is being had in the real shelves-of-files, printer-in-the-corner office. Up until now, I’m a Kombo has been a series of pop-ups and events. Now this is its own studio and kitchen, located in Copenhagen’s meat-packing district, which itself is undergoing a cultural evolution from industrial to party.
Dinner is in the kitchen. Lasse tells us there are nine set courses, each themed off a value, such as Fun, Trend, Contrast. This could all be worrying except our host is funny and charming, and the prosecco buzz is working. He reassures us Comfort Food is in there as one of the nine.
The custom-made tables are set for two, with a pair of chilled bottles from local craft beer hero and gypsy brewer Mikkeller. The table top is thick corrugated cardboard and various dotted panels are drawn on in marker and numbered. Number one is a straw sticking out of a hole.
Fussy eaters, please look away now: this will scare the pants off you. You commit blind to this starter, bend down and go for it. Of course, it’s delicious, a fragrant, mussely broth. The second course sees steaming dim sum set on the table and then we have to use a box-cutter blade to prise open panel two and reveal an accompanying dip. The bowl glows in a pool of blue.
At the other tables, everyone’s excavating away. Interaction is the theme, but then the whole evening is already doused in that. In fact, Bo and Lasse like to mix it up with their guests (= customers) too. No more than four people can book together and, even then, you sit at different tables. This is a Social Act, don’t forget, and the ice is broken before you’ve had to saw open your second panel. This was hiding away a lit patch of fresh herbs, which you harvest with the scissors to garnish their take on sushi with garfish.
The Kombo two still do events, and so when Marie Claire magazine was throwing a gala dinner in Moscow in February to celebrate the 15th anniversary of its Russian edition, it asked I’m a Kombo to whip up the magic. An altogether different scale than the 14 or so covers their home kitchen will take. They run the Social Act for four or five nights in a row every couple of months.
A later course brings us all outside, with dough wrapped round the ends of bamboo canes, which we bake over a brazier of hot charcoal. Once your roll is ready you use it to eat lumpfish roe, with a smear of a caramel on the side adding a practical tackiness as well as the contrasting sweetness. Back inside, the promised comfort food doesn’t disappoint. Rolled stuffed lamb that we carve ourselves melts in the mouth.
Down the rabbit hole again for the sweets courses, with all sorts of feints delivering unexpected tastes and combinations. Coffee is back out in the office, where the juxtaposition of seagull motif Royal Copenhagen fine china and industrial stainless steel seems a fair analogy for I’m a Kombo’s philosophy.
There’s rigour and whimsy, craft and gags. They don’t take themselves too seriously, yet are deadly serious about every detail, nuance and taste. I’m a konvert.
See imakombo.comand thesocialact.dk