Tag Archives: takeaway

Poshing up Take-Away: Det Franske Hus

Having had a baby recently time is often at a premium and preparing food low on the agenda. Unless you have friends who bring food over (thanks!) or food stocked in the freezer this may quickly end up in a take-away bonanza. However, quickly you will probably get tired of eating pizza, sushi and/or Chinese.

One place where you can get something that bit different is Det Franske Hus. As the name implies, the place in Broager is run by a Frenchman, Thierry Manane and the aim is to provide good food for its customers. The regular menu on offer is not wide but it changes regularly: a weekly menu (Monday-Friday), a weekly fish menu (Tuesday-Saturday) and a monthly menu are offered. It is mainly for pick-up from Broager, but we were also told that for a charge of 150 DKK they will deliver to Sonderborg.

We opted for the weekly menu on take away last week: warm salmon mousse with fish cream and shrimps as starter, stuffed pork filet with baked leeks and rosti potatoes as main, and apple tart with apricots for dessert. You do not need to order all 3 courses and in fact we ordered 2 starters, 3 mains and 2 desserts between 3 people and got more than full.

IMG_20150305_171151

The food came packed in aluminium foil dishes in a polystyrene box. All dishes had clearly marked information on how to warm them up (temperature and duration). It seems that some thought does go into this as the same temperature was required for all dishes, making warming up easy. Warming up times was between 15 and 20 minutes, after which the food was warm through very nicely. This is how the weekly take away offer is served. The other items from Det Franske Hus is offered as catering and is delivered warm and ready to eat with the appropriate china to serve it from.

IMG_20150305_172428

We enjoyed all the food. I was particularly surprised by the starter, as it was not something I would have ever picked. The cabbage, in particular, was really nicely spiced probably with cumin, which is not something I would have thought of. The main was a decent piece of pork, though a bit salty, especially for my non-Danish mother who was visiting! The dessert was again really good.

IMG_20150305_171225

You can easily order the food by calling them before 10 am on the day and you can agree a time to pick up (or organise delivery). Payment can be in cash or by bank transfer after you collect the food (they have no card terminal).

We were really satisfied with what we got. Furthermore, it is not only for daily food that the place is set up. It is, even more so I would say, set up to deliver food for special occasions. And in fact, that was part of the reason we tried it out: as a trial run for a special meal we have coming up. The trial run went smoothly so we will definitely be ordering more food from there!

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.

Review: Asian Wok House, Nordborg

Just down the road from Nordborg Bio is Asian Wok House. Having heard very good things about it from several people we decided to give it a try.

Asian Wok House is, as the name implies, an Asian restaurant. We were greeted warmly by our waiter and led to our choice of table. Surprisingly even though the restaurant officially opens at 5pm, there was already another table there when we arrived at 5:15, happily tucking in to their food, and the restaurant soon filled up with people.

The restaurant offers both an A’ la carte menu and a buffet (as well as a take away menu if for some reason the decor of the place doesn’t entice you to stay once you are in, or you are in a hurry). Wanting to have the opportunity to sample as many of the delights as possible, we opted for the buffet.

On asking if this is our first time, our waiter graciously took us over to the buffet area where he explained to us all that was on offer. The buffet is actually split into a normal buffet area and a Mongolian barbeque area, both of which you can sample as part of the buffet menu.

bd's Mongolian Grill

What I found to be a nice touch is that the waiters help you choose the sauces for your Mongolian buffet choices based on your choice of meat as well as preferences in terms of amount of spices, garlic etc. For a Mongolian barbeque virgin as me this was excellent. The meat, vegetables and noodles are then cooked on a big grill by the chef on hand for this purpose.

On the recommendation of the waiter we started our meal with a bowl of hot chicken soup, followed by a sampling of the Mongolian buffet and then the buffet. My favourite was definitely the Mongolian buffet noodle option I had with crab meat and squid, the fried prawns and chicken and the spring rolls.

My main issue with the restaurant is the same one I have with all the Danish restaurants I have been to so far, that the food is too salty for me. But then I guess that is really my issue rather than the restaurants’ now that I am in Denmark, since the Danes around me always seem to love it! Nevertheless, the very good service you get at this place and the taste of the food makes it a place to visit if you are looking for food in the area.

Photo by Dome Poon aka MoHotta18.