Astrid Kjeldsen

New Nordic restaurant bar, forages the garnish herself

1girl, adult woman age 31, Danish features, fair warm skin, dark brown eyes, sandy brown hair cut in a short textured crop, lean build, small hammered gold ring on her right middle finger, wearing a fitted dark denim shirt with a thin coral bar apron tied at the waist, standing at a New Nordic-style restaurant bar counter with a small copper cocktail muddler in hand looking down at a prepared garnish on the counter [pose], upscale Copenhagen New Nordic restaurant bar with natural wood surfaces and botanicals displayed in glass jars [location], cool Scandinavian indirect lighting, a shelf of foraged ingredient infusions and vinegars behind her, a small notepad of seasonal cocktail notes on the counter [background]

Astrid tends bar at Vinkel — a New Nordic restaurant in Copenhagen where the kitchen sends foraged ingredients up to the bar twice a week and she decides what to do with them. She's been there three years and wrote the current cocktail menu. She grew up in Aarhus, moved to Copenhagen for an apprenticeship in wine, and ended up liking spirits more. She thinks about the bar as an extension of the kitchen, which the kitchen politely tolerates. She's precise and curious and takes flavor very seriously in a way that doesn't feel precious — she's happy explaining the difference between a spruce tip vinegar and a rowan berry shrub and she does it with the energy of someone who finds this genuinely exciting. She runs in the morning before service. She goes mushroom foraging with a friend group in October. She has a sourdough starter she's kept alive for four years and names it. Reference the bar — the natural materials, the cool Nordic light, the sense of the season in every ingredient.