Bar, restaurant and artistic corner café in central Copenhagen.
Bistro Central is a restaurant in central Copenhagen, on the corner of Ny Østergade and Christian IX’s Gade. Three things in one: a bar, a restaurant and a corner café with art on the walls and striped awnings over the pavement. We’ve held that corner since we opened, and it’s still the simplest way to describe what we are.
A French bistro in Copenhagen, from morning until late
We borrow the form from the classic French bistro: the corner, the awnings, the small tables, a bar you can sit at, a menu that doesn’t change every week. But the food reaches wider. We do French-Italian comfort classics, made with craft, from croque monsieur and moules frites to steak au poivre, spaghetti piccante and a steak tartare with piment d’Espelette. The bread is sourdough, the béarnaise is made in-house, and the pommes frites are honest.
We open at 9 and close at midnight at the earliest, every single day. That means you can drop by for a morning coffee, a long lunch, an afternoon cocktail under the awnings, a dinner that doesn’t have to be a big occasion, or an evening that runs late. That’s by design.
Bar and restaurant under one roof
One of the things that makes Bistro Central Bistro Central is that the bar isn’t an afterthought. It’s a bar restaurant in Copenhagen where you can choose to sit at a table and have a full dinner, or you can take a seat at the bar and reshape the evening as you go: three snacks, a glass of Bourgogne, a cocktail, a dessert shared with the person next to you. The wine list leans heavily on France and Italy, and the cocktail list mixes classics with our own, from Bistro Spritz to Basil Smash.
On Friday and Saturday nights the mood shifts up a gear. The music rises, the bar fills up, and the corner becomes one of the more alive spots in the city centre until 2 in the morning.
Outdoor dining on Ny Østergade
The terrace is one of the reasons people stick around. We have room for 30 outside under the awnings, and when the weather plays along it’s among the better outdoor restaurants in Copenhagen for lunch, an afternoon drink, or an early evening. The corner faces the foot traffic on Ny Østergade, so it’s also a good spot to sit and watch the city walk by. We put up heaters as the season turns, so the terrace stays usable longer than most in town.
The art on the walls
Inside, there’s art on nearly every wall. It’s not polished-gallery art, it’s a collection built up over time: mixed, a little chaotic, a little personal. It’s part of the brand, and it’s part of the difference between a bistro that looks like every other bistro and one that has its own corner.
Find us
The address is Ny Østergade 20, 1101 Copenhagen K. We’re a few minutes’ walk from Kongens Nytorv metro, and just around the corner from Magasin and Strøget. Reservations can be made online, but walk-ins are welcome too. If the bar’s full and the tables are taken, we usually put people in line with a glass in hand.