Tag Archives: pizza

Torve-Hallen, South European Food

One of the new restaurants in Sønderborg in 2016 is Torve-Hallen, with a Southern Europe inspired theme and fantastic views over the water. We went to try it out today for lunch.

Torvehallen Sønderborg

Ambience

Having views over Als Sound, it would be very hard to mess up the ambience: just give great views over the sound and everyone would be happy. And this is what has been done, with big windows overlooking the water on both levels, and an outside balcony on the second floor.

The interior is decorated with grafitti pieces by local artist Welinoo and there is imagery from Paris, Madrid, Rome, LA, Sydney, Berlin – and Sønderborg on the walls.
Streetart Torve-hallen Sønderborg

Besides the view, the place is quite nicely set up, with a wood burning oven, different seating areas, and a very airy feel. I loved the herb plants in random places on the two levels. A sniff of rosemary always makes me feel at home, where we had a big rosemary bush right outside our back door.

IMG_20160713_105959

Service

There are two levels to Torve-Hallen: a downstairs which feels more like a food hall, and an upstairs which has more of a restaurant feel with tables set up. We opted for the upstairs, where we were told that for lunch there is no service, but we are to order downstairs. On ordering we were given a buzzer to collect our food from the order desk.

Having gotten used to a pub culture in the UK, where you order at the bar, this was perfectly fine for us. It also meant that there was a bit of movement in the place, and our young son running around was not a problem (also as there weren’t that many people at 11 am). Other than that, everyone was very welcoming and helped when we had questions with a smile. No complaints!

The food at Torve-Hallen

Here the outcome was very split. We ordered a burger and one of their artisan pizzas. The artisan pizza was really good! A dough that is thin but not too thin, with still a bit of chew to it, and good quality toppings. The burger, however, was not that much of a success for us.

Let’s start with the positives of the burger. First off, I loved that the burger was not a monstrous constructions often offered in cafes here that I always struggle to understand how to eat. You could actually manage to taste all components of the burger together easily and without much mess. I liked that. However, when it came to the taste, it felt like someone looked at a McDonalds burger and attempted to improve on that. Luckily for them, they did manage to improve on that, but there is not much more positive I could say. Unfortunately, on biting into it, McDonalds is what first came to mind and kept on returning with every bite.

There was one amazing bit to the burger though! I loved the ketchup-like sauce offered with the fries! The only downside was that I could have had oh so much more! Especially as they first gave me regular fries rather than the sweet potato fries I had ordered. To their credit, they noticed before I even did and gave me a portion of sweet potato fries before I had even noticed! So again, great service.

They have an interesting selection of beers and seem to use the same distributor as Fox and Hounds. We haven’t yet tried the coffees there but could imagine they would be quite good.

Good beers at Torve-hallen in Sønderborg

Overall

So what would be our recommendation here? Do check it out. On a nice day sit upstairs on the outside balcony, or next to the big windows on other days. As for food, stick with what they do best: pizzas! Asking around, everyone we have talked to who has had pizzas has nothing bad to say, but everyone who has had the other meat dishes was not as impressed. And if you can, ask for a side of the amazing ketchup they serve with fries. Even if just to taste it :D.

 

Ristorante Da Nico – Fast pizza, good food

Pizza restaurant Da Nico, SønderborgOn our way home one night from a concert at Sonderborg Castle we were discussing what to cook for dinner. As we walked by Ristorante Da Nico on Brogade we decided on a vim to go in for dinner. We have walked by numerous times by never actually made it inside and since it’s been a year we thought it was about time to try out this cozy looking place.

The place is well lit and simply decorated with items and posters from Italy giving it a homely, self-made, unpretentious feel – a bit at odds with the Danish way of making things cozy, dimmed and candlelit. This you can also see on their website which is straight to the point of the menu and nothing else.

(I think) The place is run by an Italian husband and wife Roberto & Nicola Pino.

We were there before six in the evening and the only guests in the restaurant so we had the waitress and cook to ourselves. While we were waiting for our order we were offered some complimentary bread and butter.

Our pizzas were fast to arrive, they were simple but made with fresh ingredients. The pizza base at Da Nico is thick and soft like the Neapolitan variety which makes the whole pizza a big meal.

All in all a good experience and a quick meal.

Takeaway Days: Hungry.dk

Takeaways are very popular in Denmark, especially in university towns such as Sonderborg. The most abundant establishments (by far) are pizzerias (or… pizzarias, as they tend to be called here), offering seating at small tables in the waiting area, as well as delivery.

One of the ways of ordering online is through aggregate websites that help you find takeaways that deliver in your area, select what you want and order. One of these websites is hungry.dk, which seems to be the new kid on the block, having slightly fewer restaurants on the list in the Sønderborg area than similar websites. We decided to try it out one Friday evening when the wind was blowing, the rain was pouring and we were out of food!

Starting with the website itself, it is quite easy to use. I liked the fact that the different menu sections can be collapsed so I didn’t need to scroll down through e.g. burgers if it was pizzas I was interested in. I also liked that at the top they showed you the most popular dishes, as it helps tell you what is good from that place. The rest of the website is, as should be expected, easy to use, even allowing you to very easily select extra toppings for your pizza at the ordering page rather than at the paying page (or just by writing in a text field).

We decided to try Oasen – a couple of friends have spoken fondly of this place. Order through… now you just need to wait. The waiting time given was of 75 minutes, but the pizza arrived with no issues whatsoever within the hour. All in all very good service and I look forward to seeing more restaurants added to the list.

Disclosure: We were offered a voucher for 150 DKK in exchange for trying out the hungry.dk website and writing about it. The opinions on the website are our own.