Cheap Eats in Copenhagen for Visitors: 14 Good Meals Under 200 DKK in 2026

Updated 22 October 2026

On your first evening in Copenhagen you stop at a restaurant window and do the sum: a three-course dinner at a mid-range restaurant costs 350 to 450 DKK a head, before anyone orders a drink. Your food budget for the whole day is 400 DKK.

You can still eat well on it. Most of that bill pays for the extra courses and the dining room around the food: the waiter, the evening booking, the table that is yours for the night.

So the way to eat well here for under 200 DKK is to choose the format before the food. A counter, a market stall, a long shared table or a lunch menu takes the dining room out of the price, and the cooks behind several of these plates came from Noma, Geranium and Hotel d'Angleterre. Each format keeps its own hours, so plan the day by the clock.

What Does a Good Meal Under 200 DKK Buy in Copenhagen in 2026?

It buys one cooked main dish that fills a person at lunch or dinner, at any of the fourteen places below: a burger, a bowl of noodles or porridge, three tacos, two open sandwiches, a pizza or a plate of rice. Snacks and drinks sit outside the count unless a combo includes them.

The cap sits a little above the city's own average. Visit Copenhagen puts a meal at an inexpensive restaurant at 140 to 160 DKK, so 200 DKK leaves room for a better plate. VAT is already in every menu price and tipping is optional, so the number you read is the number you pay.

Tap water is free, with more than 60 public fountains for refills, and that matters more than it sounds. At these prices a drink is the thing most likely to push a meal over the cap.

What the fourteen share is the way they serve you. Each one drops something: a course, the booking, the waiter or the evening sitting. The full ladder, up to a tasting menu, is in what a good meal costs in Copenhagen in 2026.

14 Cheap Meals in Copenhagen, Compared for 2026

Gasoline Grill and Slurp open the table and the other twelve follow in alphabetical order. Prices were read from each kitchen's menu on 17 October 2026, and the format column shows what each place leaves out to reach its price.

Where Can You Eat Well at Lunch in Copenhagen for Under 200 DKK?

Before 15:00 the cheap meal is a counter or a lunch menu, and at Selfish the clock sets the price.

Where Can You Eat at a Counter for Under 170 DKK?

The counter at Hallernes Smørrebrød in Torvehallerne has 16 stools and no waiter. Hallernes opened there in 2012, started by a business graduate who had founded a tea shop, an architect, and a goldsmith who also works as a journalist. They shut themselves in a kitchen with two experienced smørrebrød makers to rework the classics, and they banned the lettuce-leaf garnish.

Two pieces from the fixed menu make lunch: marinated salmon with fennel and dill at 88 DKK and the Kartoffelmad, potato with fried and raw onion, mayonnaise and chives, at 78 DKK, 166 DKK together. Frikadelle with potato salad is 85 DKK and roast pork with red cabbage is 95 DKK. The bar takes no bookings and cannot promise a seat, though there are shared tables outside, and it opens 10:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and 10:00 to 18:00 at weekends.

For a lighter and cheaper open sandwich, Rørt sells pieces at 55 DKK each, two for 99 DKK and three for 140 DKK from its stall at Broens Street Food. Jean Michel Grønnegaard Deleuran left an office job in 2019 to give smørrebrød less mayonnaise and more vegetables: fungi-fermented vegetables with Jerusalem artichoke cream, say, or hot-smoked salmon rillette with miso and ponzu, which carries a 20 DKK supplement.

In Nørrebro the counter serves porridge. Lasse Skjønning Andersen was 21 when he left his music studies in London, cashed in his childhood savings and opened GRØD on Jægersborggade. GRØD calls itself the world's first porridge bar, and from 11:00 its savoury bowls are a full meal: Rød daal, red lentils with cherry tomatoes, coriander, skyr and salted almonds, is 99 DKK, Svampebygotto, barley and mushrooms with aged Gammel Knas cheese, is 109 DKK, and Chicken Congee with hoisin chicken, peanuts and kimchi cabbage is 119 DKK.

Which Lunch Menus Are Worth Planning Around?

Selfish, a sushi counter at Elmegade 4 in Nørrebro, shows the lunch discount in two lines of one menu. Seven pieces cost 125 DKK on the lunch menu, served 12:00 to 15:00 from Tuesday to Saturday, and 155 DKK on the regular menu. Nine pieces are 150 DKK and thirteen are 195 DKK at lunch, and owner-chef Kaoru Fujisawa picks and imports the counter's sake himself.

Restaurant Tokyo has cooked Japanese food in Copenhagen since 1964 and calls itself the first Japanese restaurant in Scandinavia. The dining room is upstairs over a 7-Eleven on Vesterbrogade, and Teruo Nakazawa, who bought the restaurant in the 1970s, was still at the stove when Heartbeats reviewed it in December 2022.

Its lunch runs from Thursday to Saturday, with the kitchen closing at 14:30, and tables are booked online or on +45 33 31 01 65. Gyuudon, a beef rice bowl, and karaagedon, a fried chicken rice bowl, are 135 DKK each, vegetarian curry rice is 120 DKK and katsu curry rice is 145 DKK.

Nordhus goes further and serves only one lunch. The youth-run cultural house in Den Røde By (the Red Town) in Nordhavn opened on 11 October 2024, founded by Felicia Nørgaard, and each weekday it puts one set lunch on long tables for 125 DKK: the dish of the day, a salad and bread. The dish changes every day and the week's menu goes up on the lunch page: potato and leek soup one day, red lentil dal or ginger and lime roast chicken another.

Lunch is booked through the Nordhus site and the house is closed at weekends. It cannot accommodate individual dietary requirements or allergies, so check the day's dish before you book.

The catch with every one of these lunches is the clock. By 15:00 the lunch menus are gone, and the cheap meal moves outdoors.

What Can You Eat on the Harbour and at a Burger Counter Before 20:00?

Broens Street Food and Gasoline Grill carry the cheap meal from lunch into the early evening, and both reward an early arrival. The harbour stalls shut at 20:00 on most nights, and Gasoline Grill sells until the day's meat runs out.

What Can You Eat at Broens Street Food?

Broens Street Food has stood on the Greenland Trading Square since 2018. The merchant Andreas Bjørn founded the square in 1735, and its 1761 warehouse was Noma's original home, so the stalls cook a few steps from where the city's most famous dining room began. They open 11:30 to 20:00 from Sunday to Thursday and 11:00 to 21:00 on Friday and Saturday.

The kitchen behind an award-winning taco stand runs a stall here. Rosio Sanchez, a former Noma pastry chef, opened Hija de Sánchez, Spanish for "daughter of Sanchez", as a taco stand in Torvehallerne in June 2015, and three years later the easyJet Traveller panel named it the best street food in Europe.

The taco combo at the Broens stall is 115 DKK: three tacos of pork cochinita, beef barbacoa and seasonal vegetables. Chips and salsa add 55 DKK and bring the meal to 170 DKK.

Two stalls along, Nikolas Strangas sells the idea he had on a windy beach in Mykonos, which took him out of pastry kitchens at Era Ora and Hotel d'Angleterre. His flatbread is baked daily, brushed with butter and toasted, then filled with spiced pork, chicken or halloumi for 109 DKK. The gyros menu with fries and mayonnaise is 149 DKK, and halloumi makes it a vegetarian meal.

What Does 110 DKK Buy at Gasoline Grill?

The Original Burger at Gasoline Grill costs 110 DKK, with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickles and the house sauce in a potato roll made to the house recipe with mashed potatoes. The patty is pressed flat on a tool that came out of a garage in northwestern Jutland.

Founder Klaus Wittrup's father Peter, a retired toolmaker, and his friend Egon machined the first smasher in stainless steel and fitted it with an oak handle. They made every smasher by hand before they helped develop a production version.

Bought one by one, an Original Burger, regular fries at 40 DKK and a homemade lemonade at 35 DKK come to 185 DKK. The combo of burger, fries and drink starts at 155 DKK, which keeps a full meal 45 DKK under the cap, and a vegetarian Matr patty goes on any burger from 100 DKK.

Gasoline Grill takes no reservations and opens every day from 11:00 until it sells out, so lunchtime is safer than late evening. Landgreven 10 has outdoor seats only. Købmagergade 23 has seats inside and out, serves breakfast from 7:30 to 11:00 and burgers after that, and takes pre-orders through the Gasoline Grill app.

By 20:00 the quay is closing and the burger counters may have sold out. Dinner needs a different format.

Where Can You Eat Dinner With Strangers for 75 DKK?

At Absalon, a former church in Vesterbro, the kitchen cooks one dinner for the whole hall at 18:00, and that is why it costs 75 DKK from Sunday to Wednesday and 100 DKK for two courses from Thursday to Saturday. You sit at long tables with whoever came, under a high ceiling and next to a table-tennis table, in a house that runs more than 100 events a week, from life drawing to bingo.

Everyone eats the same menu, which changes daily, and on meat days a vegetarian version needs no pre-order. Tickets sell online until 16:00, and any left go on sale at the door from 17:00. Earlier in the day, lunch at 12:00 costs 60 DKK, ordered at the bar.

Absalon is the cheapest dinner of the fourteen, and it is also the least flexible: one sitting, one menu and a ticket that can sell out. Miss 18:00 and the cap gets tighter.

Where Can You Still Sit Down for Dinner Under 200 DKK After 20:00?

In a sit-down room later in the evening, 200 DKK buys one plate and not much else, so pick a kitchen whose single plate is a whole dinner. Four of the fourteen do it.

Which Pizza and Asian Plates Stay Under the Cap?

SURT's founder Giuseppe Oliva comes from a family that has made bread since 1941. His grandfather headed a water mill that baked for the Italian army in the Second World War, his father opened a bakery in 1978, and he opened SURT in Carlsberg Byen in December 2019, around an oven built on site by an oven maker called Ernesto.

Two of its sourdough pizzas come in under the cap: Marinara at 165 DKK and Margherita at 175 DKK, with the rest at 235 to 265 DKK. SURT is open 12:00 to 21:30 every day and takes bookings online, the first bottle of water is free, and a table is yours for about 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Propaganda opened in December 2021, run by the Italian sommelier Riccardo Marcon, owner of Barabba, with the former Noma chef Youra Kim in the kitchen. On its short menu the mushroom coconut sticky rice, steamed in banana leaves with green pepper and tamarind sauce, is 140 DKK and needs no side. The haddock wonton with potato purée and lemongrass is 155 DKK, while the beef ribs at 170 DKK need the 45 DKK rice and land just over the cap.

Propaganda serves from 17:00 Monday to Saturday, closing at 23:00 on weeknights and at midnight on Friday and Saturday, with last orders an hour earlier. It books groups of up to 12 online.

Goldfinch opened in December 2022 in the courtyard behind Esmée at Kongens Nytorv 8, and it takes its name from the Hong Kong restaurant in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love. Will King-Smith, formerly of Geranium, cooks nostalgic Cantonese food meant for sharing, so a dinner for one is a single large plate.

That plate is fried rice with egg, smoked bacon and dried shrimp at 175 DKK, shrimp cheung fen, steamed rice noodle sheets with seasoned soy, also at 175 DKK, or dan dan noodles with seasoned pork at 195 DKK. The full menu runs from 17:30 to 22:00, and to 23:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, and the restaurant always leaves room for walk-ins.

What Does a 185 DKK Bowl Buy at Slurp?

Slurp has served ramen on Nansensgade since 2017, with noodles we roll and cut each morning, and a crowdfunding campaign raised money for the equipment, interior and training at our second room on Borgergade.

Today the plainest bowl on the Slurp menu is the Shoyu at 185 DKK: a chicken broth with chashu cut from pork neck, a soft egg, spring onions, mushroom paste, chard and garden sorrel, over those morning noodles.

Bowls cost less in our first year. In October 2017 a reviewer paid 140 DKK for a spicy miso special of chicken broth, slow-cooked pork belly, grilled bean sprouts and a smoked, marinated egg, with pork gyoza at 55 DKK on the side. The recipes have changed since, so the two prices are not like for like, and today's bowls run 35 to 55 DKK above that special.

At 185 DKK a Shoyu costs 75 DKK more than the Original Burger at Gasoline Grill and 86 DKK more than two pieces at Rørt. If the price is the only test, those counters win. Pick Slurp for a hot bowl of ramen at a seat after the stalls have closed: Slurp Nansensgade has 22 seats and Slurp Borgergade has 36.

How Far Does 400 DKK Go in a Day of Eating?

Further than one mid-range dinner. Take a visitor on a Tuesday with 400 DKK for food. At noon they sit at the Hallernes counter for salmon and potato on rye, 166 DKK. At 18:00 they take a seat at Absalon's long table for 75 DKK. The day's food costs 241 DKK, less than the 350 DKK three-course dinner above, with 159 DKK left over.

Two other days work the same way, using only prices from the entries above:

These totals use the prices read on 17 October 2026, the Sunday to Wednesday rate at Absalon and no drink beyond the one inside the Gasoline Grill combo, so a beer or two eats into the change. The last plan ends in a bowl of ramen, and Slurp has more than one way to keep that bowl under the cap.

What Can You Order at Slurp for a Casual Dinner Under 200 DKK?

If the day ends in ramen, four bowls stay under 200 DKK at dinner in both Slurp rooms: Veggie at 175 DKK, Shoyu and Shio at 185 DKK and Nduja Miso at 195 DKK. Dinner orders run until 20:45 at Slurp Nansensgade and 21:45 at Slurp Borgergade, and you walk in, because neither room takes bookings.

Shio adds smoked mackerel to the chicken broth, Nduja Miso is a creamy chicken broth with spicy nduja butter, and the Veggie bowl, a mushroom and celeriac broth, can be made vegan without its egg. The two dinner specials, the Unagi ramen and the Borgergade tonkotsu, sit at or above 200 DKK.

The second dish worth knowing at Slurp is the karaage chicken: deep-fried, with Japanese mayonnaise, 120 DKK in both rooms. Say two friends walk into Slurp Nansensgade at 20:00 on a weeknight, with 45 minutes of dinner orders left. One has the karaage and a 65 DKK Åben x Slurp rice lager, 185 DKK, and the other has the Veggie bowl at 175 DKK, so both stay under the cap.

Slurp Nansensgade opens for dinner at 16:00 and Slurp Borgergade at 17:00, dogs are welcome in both rooms, and our kitchen cannot accommodate guests who need to avoid gluten.

Which Cheap Meal Should You Pick Tonight?

Pick the format by the hour you will be hungry. Before 15:00, sit at a counter or catch a lunch menu: Hallernes, GRØD, Selfish, Absalon's 60 DKK lunch, Nordhus on weekdays and Restaurant Tokyo from Thursday to Saturday. Until 20:00, go to the Broens quay or a Gasoline Grill counter, earlier rather than later. At 18:00, Absalon, if you hold a ticket.

After that, choose one plate and a seat: Goldfinch until 22:00, Propaganda until last orders, SURT until 21:30, or a bowl at Slurp until 20:45 or 21:45, depending on the room. More late options are in our guide to casual dinner after 9pm in Copenhagen.

Then check the diet. The Veggie ramen at Slurp can be made vegan, the Matr patty makes any Gasoline Grill burger vegetarian from 100 DKK, the halloumi gyros at Strangas is 109 DKK, GRØD's Rød daal is 99 DKK, and Absalon cooks a vegetarian version of its dinner every night.

Last, decide whether you need a booked seat. SURT, Restaurant Tokyo, Propaganda and the Nordhus lunch take bookings; everywhere else, arrive early and keep the drink inside the 200 DKK.

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