Donda in Christianshavn quickly became a beloved spot for Copenhagen residents when it opened in 2019, offering colorful and flavorful Latin American dishes at a lively pace.
Later, Donda Deli opened in Vesterbro with the same beautiful and spicy finesse. Now, the original Donda in Christianshavn has transformed, shifting its focus from Latin America to India and Sri Lanka.
According to the restaurant, Khana is a Hindustani word for a meal or the act of eating. Despite being newly reopened, Khana was packed this Thursday evening on Strandgade.
The setup at Khana is familiar: Two seatings, a few bar seats reserved for walk-ins – typically tourists, industry folks, or friends in high heels. A shared menu (seven small dishes for DKK 465) must be ordered by everyone at the table. The same dishes are available as larger a la carte servings.
You can start the evening with an add-on of oysters topped with the restaurant’s selected flavors. As often happens, the appetizers end up being the most exciting, the main course loses momentum, and the dessert is a wildcard that can go either way.
The menu features themed cocktails – six different ones at Khana (DKK 110-120) – and a limited selection of wine, beer, and soda. Since most patrons opt for the shared menu, your bill, depending on your thirst and choice of drinks, will typically land between DKK 650 and 1,000.
The above is a classic recipe for 7 out of 10 newly opened restaurants in Copenhagen, and Khana is no exception.
Bingo!
We started – bingo – with cocktails and oysters. Le gris oysters (three for DKK 125) with coconut vinegar – new to me – chili paste, and curry leaf oil that tasted fine but mostly of oysters with a sharp vinaigrette.
I enjoyed a splendid gunpowder punch, a cocktail with gin and green tea, aloe vera, and lime, where the green tea came through elegantly. Meanwhile, the first bites of the menu were served: A small edible baked bowl filled with grilled monkfish cheeks, gooseberry juice, and herbs. Sharp, soft, crunchy, flavorful.
Sashimi slices of hiramasa paired with slices of daikon radish, accompanied by a thickened cold lime and mango dip and topped with nasturtium, trout roe, and tapioca pearls. Fine fish, fine presentation, and a good take on the ubiquitous crudo-ceviche wave.
Khana’s bread offering was the best dish of the evening: soft, grilled rolls filled with seeds and spicy cauliflower, served with butter whipped with daal. Outstandingly good, far better on the palate than on paper.
Grilled chicken can be a simple yet heavenly mouthful, and we were close to that at Khana. Grilled on a skewer, tender, juicy, with the scent of charcoal that always evokes eternal summer, greasy fingers, and the sun setting over a holiday destination. At Khana, it was served with a less exciting salad mainly composed of chickpeas, always evoking less eternal summer, more eternal canteen and food pyramids. Well-spiced with a plethora of fresh herbs, onions, and dressing, yet the canteen feeling never quite left us.
Brown-on-brown
Throughout the evening, we were on the verge of (too) long waits between each serving, and from the chicken dish to the palate cleanser – a delightful chilled piece with oyster leaf, aloe vera, and apple – there was a half-hour gap.
Then came the evening’s brown-on-brown main course, which wouldn’t win a beauty contest but shined with perfectly cooked breaded skate wing. It rested on a makhani sauce – think butter chicken sauce plus lobster broth – and came with a coconut chutney.
On the side, good rice with caramelized onions in a clay pot, sealed with a piece of dough at the start of cooking and broken only upon arrival at the table. The dish was nicely prepared but lacked a bit of acidity or crunch to break the somewhat uniform flavor profile.
We drank Slovenian orange wine – Hrdza 2022 from Milovin made from Riesling, Welschriesling, and Grüner Veltliner. It cost DKK 120 per glass, and I can’t remember ever having been poured so little in a glass as at Khana, which says a lot in Copenhagen.
Kulfi is one of the happier desserts in the world – a milk-based ice dessert, typically without eggs, with cardamom, salt, and pistachio. Unfortunately, Khana’s variant with both milk ice cream and goat cheese never won me over – the goat cheese’s sourness disturbed rather than challenged or complemented.
We finished with an espresso martini made with cardamom, a wonderfully good idea that should be copied wildly.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Copenhagen is flooded with ambitious Indian and Sri Lankan restaurants. Bar Vitrine on Møntergade opened this summer, where former Noma chef Dhriti Arora serves Indian-inspired dishes at a new, high, sensory-rich, and thirst-inducing level. Similarly, the recently closed Lola in Christianshavn delved into Indian interpretations. But overwhelming, the selection is not.
For this reason, it seems paradoxical to write that Khana, despite many really good flavors and fine servings this evening, ended up feeling somewhat anonymous and generic.
Maybe we hit a slow, assembly-line kind of night, or maybe Khana was understaffed. Either way, the staff was rushing, and the dish presentations felt hurried and rehearsed.
