Insider Guide To Tisvilde, Denmark with Susheel Schroeder

MEET SUSHEEL SCHROEDER, Portrait, FAMILY & TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER

 Susheel is an acclaimed portrait and travel photographer known for her contemporary portraits and evocative travel photographs. She is also a mother of 3 boys and lives in London.

Read on as Susheel shares her favourite places to visit in Tisvilde, a summer town on the North Zealand coast of Denmark, 40 minutes from Copenhagen where her husband’s family have had a home for generations. As regular visitors year on year, here’s her top discoveries on where to eat, stay, shop and more.

1) What first drew you to Tisvilde, and what makes it feel so special to you?

There’s a sweet wholesomeness to Tisvilde that makes it so joyful to visit. It’s about family and connection and cycling to the bakery in the morning for fresh bread, it’s picking blackberries on the road side and napping in the garden after lunch. It’s a full but carefree countryside existence, and getting to live it for a few weeks a year is such a welcome reset from our busy London life. As the Danes would say, it’s very hygge. My husband’s family are from Copenhagen but Tisvilde has been the place they spent every summer, and still do.

2) Where’s your go-to spot for a morning coffee and why?

Most mornings we find ourselves at the bakery Bagt on Hovedgaden, the main street running through Tisvilde town. It has most delicious seeded Rugbrød (ryebread), Kanelsnegle (cinnamon buns) and Brunsviger )a warm Brioche cake covered in brown sugar).My husband has a coffee company in London called Hagen and so can be pretty particular about his morning coffee but has vouched for the coffee here. The seats outside catch the morning sun and are fun for watching locals queue up in their dressing gowns for warm bread. On a slower weekend morning, we might visit Helenekilde Badehotel, a beautiful beachside hotel, and have coffee on their terrace looking out on the bluest Kattegat Sea. We once met Bradley Cooper having lunch there. As good a reason to visit as any.

3) Which restaurants do you always recommend to friends visiting for the first time?

I love simple food well made - those Noma menus would have been lost on me - so my favourite place in town is Toby’s, the beach café (or ‘Strandkiosken’ in Danish) that sells the best burger you’ll ever have. We eat on picnic benches in the sand and watch the sunset over bottles of good wine while our children swing in hammocks and play in the sand. We often invite our friends from Copenhagen to meet us here for an early evening dinner. A small winding path between rosehip bushes takes you from Toby’s to the edge of a wide beautiful beach, Tisvildeleje Strand, surrounded by warm dunes and tall beach grass, which leads down to clear shallow water. Like the Indian Ocean, if it were 16c.

There are many great restaurants in Tisvilde, the Danes do food really well. I love the fisk fillet (a lightly pan fried white fish) and chicken salad at Helenekilde Badehotel and The Little Café on Hovedgaden with it’s comfortable mismatched seating is perfect for lunch and has delicious vegetarian food.

Rabarbergarden is an organic farm and rustic restaurant run by chef Thomas Elleroft Køster and his wife Louise, who are both passionate about sustainability and voiding food waste. It's a short drive from Tisvilde near it's neighbouring town Vejby but so worth a visit.

On cooler evenings I love sitting inside Tisvilde Bio Bistro, a brasserie with richer food and warm candlelight.

After dinner we cycle down to the ice cream parlour, Hansens Flccdeis, to get the boys the Iswaffel (a soft ice with toppings) that we’ve bribed them with all day.

Culturally Danes enjoy eating at home and on many evenings we BBQ with grandparents and siblings and cousins, buying meats from Kødsnedkeren (the ‘meat carpenter’) or fish from the fish market, Den Friske Fisk. Their remoulade (a Danish tartare sauce) is the best.

The surprisingly well stocked local store, Min Købmand, is also good for last minute and larder items.

4) Best places to stay and why?

There are very few hotels in Tisvilde so visitors often rent from Copenhagen residents that have a week or two to spare at their summer homes, via Landfolk and Airbnb. For a shorter stay the family-run Helenekilde Badehotel is my favourite. Decorated in a charming summerhouse style, with jute carpets, rattan furniture and tastefully weathered antiques, the walls are lined with theatre posters and photographs of an old Tisvilde.

My husband’s great grandfather built one of the first houses in Tisvilde and our boys love to see what it looked like then. The former ballet dancer Alexander Kølpin renovated Helenekilde and it’s sister property Tisvilde Strandhotel and has overseen them for over 20 years. He has great taste. 

The rooms are simple but elegant and well equipped. In their gardens you’ll find deck chairs overlooking the ocean and winding steps that take you down to the beach. You’ll often find guests in cosy white dressing gowns on their way to the sauna after a cold swim and everyone will say hello.

5) Where do you shop that feels authentically Danish? Any concept stores or independent boutiques we shouldn’t miss?

I love shopping in Tisvilde, more than I ever do in London. The owners of the few small boutiques there curate such a perfect mix of pieces from Danish and international brands and their stores are full of perfectly oversized cashmere jumpers , linen trousers, summer dresses and chic accessories in muted tones. I always find things I love there and can’t find elsewhere. My favourites are H66 and No. 17 Limited, a Nordic concept store, both on Hovedgaden. 

There is a big culture of thrifting and collecting antiques in Denmark which I love. I have a very niche obsession with old embroidered pictures and always find some here. On the weekends during the busy summer season the Tisvilde Loppermarked (flea market) attracts people from all the surrounding areas looking for vintage lamps and furniture. This summer I found my new favourite piece of art at a small thrift shop on the main road - some embroidered parrots on canvas from the 60's. There will often be rails outside peoples homes with things they no longer need, I’ve seen silk blouses and oversized leather jackets from the nineties being sold for 20kr (a little over £2) in a neighbour’s front garden. It’s these one-off unique finds, full of history that always find their way into my overweight bag on the way home.

6) Best place to visit/activity for a rainy afternoon (Gallery/museum)?

Atelier I Lejet, a ceramic and vintage shop that I love spending time in (without my children) is full of the most interesting handmade pieces and the owner, Henriette Stender Bengtsson, offers ceramic making classes on weekends. I was desperate to do it on a rainy day but this summer we were lucky to have lots of sun so I’ll save it for next year.

Scandi’s believe that there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing (Linda Akeson McGurk’s book on this is a good read) so on rainy days we’re still usually outside, biking through the forest in rain jackets and picking chanterelle mushrooms for dinner. 

Karen Blixen, the author that wrote Out of Africa in the 30’s had a house close to Tisvilde that is now a museum and The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is a drive up the coast and has a studio for children and a sculpture garden to run around in.

Our children love the Experimentarium science centre, just outside of Copenhagen and a 30 minute drive from Tisvilde, which can keep them busy for a whole day.

At our family home we’ll light a fire on colder days and play with Lego, so the children don’t mind at all when it rains!

7) Where’s your favourite place to swim, cycle or spend time outdoors?

The main beach Tisvildeleje Strand is a kilometre long sandy beach (where you’ll find Toby’s) dotted with colourful beach huts and found at the end of the main street Hovedgaden. I love being there and it’s beach grass and dunes keep our boys busy playing dens for hours. The water is quite fresh, aka freezing, but swimming in it makes you feel so alive so I try to whenever I can. My mother in law is 80 and still swims every morning so it must be good for you! The sun sets over the water here and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. 

I’m too scared to cycle in London so I love cycling in Tisvilde, our 2 year old sits in the front of my husband’s cargo bike and we bike everywhere. There is a beautiful forest that ends at the beach so we often make a detour through there before dinner.

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