Goldfinch

The story

Goldfinch Copenhagen – Modern Cantonese Restaurant at Kongens Nytorv

A Cantonese Kitchen With a Personal Story

Tucked into a courtyard behind Kongens Nytorv, Goldfinch is not the kind of place you stumble across by accident — and that feels deliberate. The room is red: bar stools, tiled walls, panel panelling. Bamboo baskets steam in full view, and a large wok works at full pace. There are lazy Susans on the tables and a bar that takes walk-ins. On Friday and Saturday the kitchen runs until 2 a.m.

White Guide awarded Goldfinch its Masters level recognition in 2026, with reviewers noting that the moment you walk through the door, the atmosphere takes hold — a south Chinese metropolitan energy held inside something that still feels local and grounded. Crucially, they observed, there is no kitsch: no waving cats, no dragons, nothing extraneous. Just the food and the room.

The Chef and the Menu

The kitchen is led by Will King-Smith, formerly head chef at Geranium. The menu is rooted in his own childhood memories of Cantonese food, interpreted through a professional kitchen. Dumplings, scallop toast, char siu, salt-and-pepper chicken wings — and Hong Kong-style French toast to close. It is Cantonese cooking treated with the same seriousness that Copenhagen's dining scene brings to any other cuisine, without losing the warmth and directness that defines the food in the first place.

Why It Stands Apart

Copenhagen has had Chinese restaurants before, but as White Guide put it plainly: this is far from what the city has previously known. Goldfinch earns its place on Kongens Nytorv not through novelty but through conviction — a chef cooking food that means something to him, in a space designed to match the energy of that food.