Sill and Strömming

From a food cart window beside Stockholm's harbor, this man served us one of Sweden's true treats. Nystekt Strömming is a little place, with a simple name - it literally translates to "freshly fried herring."  We've eaten a lot of the stuff in Sweden, Norway and Iceland... not just fried, but also cured, pickled and slathered with sauce.  Along the coastline of these northern waters, herring is a staple.  We love it.
The Swedes differentiate between sill - herring caught in the North Sea, south of Kalmar - and strömming - fished in the Baltic north of Kalmar, and slightly smaller.  They're both herring, and essentially the same species, but to locals they're as distinct as bratwurst and frankfurter.

The Swedish taste for preserved herring tends towards sweetness.  Every supermarket carries a variety of jarred sill packed in dill sauce, mustard, curry, white cream, onion, vinegar or even berries.  The main curing agent in these seems to be sugar, and they can be cloying or even syrupy.  We're fond of the herrings in senap (mustard), but to be really palatable in a sandwich it has to be tempered by other ingredients.
The consistency of this jarred stuff, on the other hand, is near perfect for a picnic.  Delicate-fleshed, but still toothsome, it's cured without cooking - the scales flash silver, the meat is pink.  On dense, dark bread, with slices of Herrgårdsost cheese, it can be delicious. At Syltkrukan, the "jam pot," we had "toasts" of egg and sill with strong cups of coffee.  It's was great for a light lunch, but Swedes often like more substance with their strömming.

On a red-painted wharfside on the northeastern coast, in the pretty town of Hudiksvall, we found out how heavy a herring lunch can feel.  Möljens - a snack stand that serves ice cream and hotdogs in addition to its famous fishes - is an institution here, and was reasonably busy on Sunday afternoon.  They have a short list of strömming preparations, all involving pre-made patties of breaded fish.  Both the "strömmingburgare" and the strömming tunnbröd wrap (tunnbröd is a kind of semi-porous flatbread) were slathered with tangy tartare sauce.  The wrap was weighed down with several pounds of mashed potato.  Eating it by the waterside, with ducks paddling around waiting for the scraps, we were reminded of New England fish filet sandwiches.  The meal was a simple, filling pleasure, but we couldn't taste much of the herring.  Flaking it apart, though, revealed real fish.  These were actual filets, not processed white mush.

Simpler and more elegant, this plate-sized cracker from a gatukök ("street kitchen," or food cart) in Härnösand was fortifying enough on a rainy day.  The man who made it was especially proud of his dill and cream sauce.  As we stood and waited, we could hear strömming crackling and spitting in the pan.  Some young Swedes stood by with their mother, waiting for their own fishy treats.

It's occurred to us before how much of a divide the Atlantic makes in people's taste for fish.  From Lithuanian restaurants to Estonian ferries, Dutch beaches to the streets of Brussels, herring is ubiquitous.  In America?  It's almost unknown.  It's a shame, really, because the little creatures are about the perfect food.  Raw, tinned, brined, fried, smoked... there's no real cut, when you look at a herring you see what you're going to eat.  And, even if the taste is a little mild, it's also a great compliment to its environmental flavors.  What other fish is so easily translatable from one preparation to another?
On a sidewalk corner of Slussen, where Stockholm's traffic, people and water come together at a narrow bridge, Nystekt Strömming dishes up some of Sweden's finest and most elemental street food.

In Scandinavia, this is fast food.  Rebecca had a demure knäckis - two lightly fried filets on knäckerbröd (like Wasa) with onions and cucumbers piled on top.  My fish came with mashed potato, lingonberry jam, red onion and beets.  The fish was fried so gently that it was coming apart under its own weight.  There was a full moon rising over Stockholm's harbor.  We sat at a makeshift outdoor table and watched ferries rock in the water, people rush by and the sky darken.  The fish was too hot to eat at first, and smelled of salt and seaside.

A Dinner in The Woods: Fäviken Magasinet

Near the end of our dinner at Fäviken Magasinet, two chefs sawed through a cow's femur.  This bit of theater happened in the middle of the dining room.  There was no preamble and no explanation until the marrow had been picked out and plated with diced calf's heart and wildflowers.  We were told to salt it ourselves and spread it on crackers.  It was a delicious few bites of food, but the magic of the restaurant isn't constrained within the normal bounds of taste and smell. 
There, in an 18th century barn, we were treated to a dark, beautiful, nearly wordless dissertation on Autumn - from the dense vegetables to the fading light to the woodfire and our bed under the eaves.  Fäviken is a total experience.  One arrives, explores, eats, sleeps, wakes up, has breakfast and leaves... baffled, excited and with a new concept of what a restaurant can be.  Namely, environmental.  As a final petit-four we were given a plate of tiny raspberries, lingonberries and blueberries.  The fruit was small-globed and cold from the night air.  It had just been picked.

In the Swedish northlands, eight hours drive north of Stockholm, Fäviken isn't actually as remote as you might be told.  There's a town about ten minutes drive from the restaurant, with other restaurants and shops - but it still feels far away from everything.  Once you arrive, you're there until the next morning. We slept, with the other guests, in the same old barn as the dining room, tucked into little rooms.  It's somewhat luxurious, though everyone has mud and mown grass on their boots, and a tractor grunted in the misty morning air.  The setting is an old hunting estate, built on an even older farm.
All of us guests were excited about the food, but even more so about sharing an adventure.  Part of the point of the place is that it's completely overwhelming; the bedrooms, the shared sauna, the long drive north, the wet meadows outside, breakfast in the morning - it's a total experience, and immersion is unavoidable.  Nobody quite knows which door to go through, how to dress or what's going to happen.  It's mysterious, but easy - the meal takes on the tone of a dinner party.  There were only ten of us. There's one seating, every course is served to everyone at the same time.  I've never been in a restaurant where the whole room says goodnight to one another, or where everyone says hello again at their breakfast tables. 

The dinner actually began in a kind of drawing room, with a hearth and wooden armchairs.  Guests sit next to each other and kindle conversation.  The barn is built of old, heavy timber.  The decor is a mixture of forest-Swede icons: a thick fur coat by the stairs, a large-tooth saw by the liquor, bundles of herbs hung to dry on the walls.  We we given glasses of wine and - almost without being aware that dinner was beginning - a sudden trickle of amuse-bouches.  The chefs brought us the food and cooked some of it right before us.  They emerged with plates and pride, gave us explanations, asked us questions.
Fäviken would be fun even if the food wasn't great.  But it is great.  It's so good that we wondered if it was the best we'd ever eaten.  The problem with comparing it to other restaurants is that other meals seem so staid in comparison.  Our dinner was a procession of thoughtful surprises. Above, a ball of what was called "pig's head."  It was so tender that it could have passed for melting butter. The fried outer crust burst between the teeth, the flavor was intensely porky.  Just before this, we'd had toasted lichens, dusted with dried trout.

Putting down two little dishes of barely congealed cheese, a chef told us proudly that it was "just five minutes old."  This immediacy is a common trait of the kitchen's.  A leaf of kale, barely steamed was "dying on the plate."  A boiled turnip had been dug up "just now, during dinner." Magnus Nilsson, the restaurant's star, told us that his scallops - cooked in the shell over juniper embers and eaten with your fingers - are often mistaken for being overcooked.  "They're not overcooked," he said.  "It's just that they are still contracting, because they're so fresh.  If you wait a few seconds, they soften up."
Before the meal, we'd taken a long walk around the fields and into the trees.  We'd seen the kitchen garden, under an old stone wall.  The sheep had trotted over to meet us. The same aromas that end up on the plate - spruce, reindeer moss - begin in the dripping woods.  That turnip had been served under a bed of "last autumn's leaves," which had been collected in the springtime when the snow retreated.  The kitchen boils them with the roots, and then piles them on the plate together.  We were urged to search for our vegetables - like digging in forest loam - then slather them with butter.  It was a warm, earthy dish that went beyond taste.  Something of the chilly wilderness had come in with the leaves and the turnip, harvested just then in the dark outside.  We were being given a taste of the seasons - both last year's and right now.

Magnus Nilsson grew up not far from Fäviken Magasinet ("magasinet" means something like "store") in the heart of sub-arctic Jämtland.  He's unassuming, gracious and young.  When we first arrived, he was trying to fix the stereo system.  After dinner, he sat with his guests as we drank tea and duck-egg liquor.  The guests began the night in awe - in Scandinavia, Nilsson's become a culinary demi-god.  Fäviken is currently ranked 34th in the world by a (somewhat improbable, but much mentioned) authority.  By the end of the evening, he seemed like a friend or a neighbor.
Though he's exceedingly humble, Nilsson does have a dramatic streak.  He chopped cauliflower with an ax and put glowing embers on the table.  He likes to play with twigs, sticking them into food to make little antlers and using them like toothpicks.

There are more courses than we could really count - the food begins in small morsels, like tiny wild treats found in the woods, then builds to larger plates before subsiding again into sweets and sleepiness.  There were beautifully briny tastes of seafood - along with the gigantic, convulsing scallops, there was monkfish singed right in the kitchen's birch coals and served with spruce jelly. Skate with shallots, "fingered" so that it looked like soft pieces of white asparagus.  A langoustine tail, so delicate that it fell apart on the plate, served with caramelized cream (a wonderful thing, gently burnt and milky flavored at once).  This tiny morsel of pea-flour crust, pea-flower and pea-cream enveloped a juicy, steamed mussel.  It tasted equally of the coast and the garden.  Mussels also turned up at one point as a kind of remoulade with flax-seed crackers.
The meal had more fish than meat, but there were some bloody exceptions. Trout roe was cupped inside a dried crisp of pig's blood. The bone marrow and heart dish was the loudest exclamation, but the most endearing was one of the first: a few strips of cured pork belly, "from last year's fattest sow."

Nilsson has a knack for the jokily gruesome.  Pigeon arrived like this; singed talons, breast and split head.  "You can use the twig to pick out the brain," we were told.  "Really, if you want to chew on it, you can eat the whole head. Except for the beak."  The smear of buttered lingonberries provided an extra jolt of bloodiness.  It was one of the last courses, and arrived to laughter.  By that point, the room had been thoroughly won over.
The desserts were concise and fun.  The most memorable was a sugar-cured duck's egg yolk with a kind of crumble.  The crusted, shiny orb got broken into the dry grain, releasing the yellow liquid inside.  "Mix it together to make a little dough," the sommelier said, "then have it with some of this meadowsweet ice cream."

The nicest thing about Fäviken is that, even with all the complicated preparations and surprising flavors, it's really a very simple place.  When I woke up - hours before the nine-o'clock breakfast - I took another walk.  My boots got wet from the dew, the mountains around were hidden by fog. The birches were bright yellow in the cold morning light.  It felt and smelled like fall.  Most of what we ate the night before - aside from the salty seafood - had come from right there.  Trout is fished in the pond. The meat is butchered in another barn, the vegetables are grown in the garden. The berries, spruce and birch come from the woods.  Taking that morning walk, I felt like I was still experiencing the meal.
Our favorite food at Fäviken?  To tell the truth, it might have been the butter.  It was so rich that the color was almost orange.  The taste was of summer grass.  It's made from mountain cow milk, old Swedish breeds.  Our host agreed that it was delicious.  "You're lucky to have it, actually," Nilsson said.  "The brothers who make it don't get along.  These are the last days of the butter."

The Loftiest Berry

"We're cooking cloudberry jam today!" the woman behind the counter at Syltkrukan, ("Jam Pot,") announced.  We'd just been served our light lunch and coffee, a slice of rye bread each - mine topped with hard boiled egg and herring, Merlin's with liver pate and pickles. A man had just come out to fetch more empty containers to bring into the back room, of which we could make out the gleam of steel machinery and busy people.   She could tell we were curious.  Before we could take another bite, we were whisked back into the work room to behold the spinning of gold.   Cloudberry jam is a delicacy in Sweden and we've been looking out for it since arriving. Stumbling upon the jam family business was a little like finding a cloudberry, I'd imagine. We were muddy-booted and off the beaten track, it was tucked away in the Uppland forest.  It was magical.

A heavy box that said "FRAGILE" once arrived at the doorstep of our New York apartment. Inside, were a half a dozen jars of jam all the way from Sweden.  Merlin had taken a trip to the country recently and fell in love with the never-before-tasted cloudberry and lingonberry preserves.  The delivery, which he'd ordered, had three of each.  Most of the precious cargo was repackaged and sent off to family for Valentine's Day, but one jar of cloudberry was tucked away in our cupboard.  Merlin knew that once it was opened, it would vanish (and that each jar had cost nearly $20).   Swedes take cloudberries just as seriously, as was affirmed by our visit to Jam Pot.

"We call it Norrland's Gold," Per Wetterholm told us in the jam making room at Syltkruken.  An average of 50,000 tons of wild berries grow in Sweden's forests every year and about 96 - 98% of them go unpicked.  But not cloudberries.   If they are there for the picking, they are found for the jamming.   Hjortron, as they are called in Swedish, are rare for a number of reasons.   They are difficult for even the most skilled forager - of which there are many in Sweden - to find.  Tucked into swamps, marshes and bogs amongst fern plants, they have only one berry per stalk if that many.  It can take up to seven years for a fruit to be produced.  Some years, there are no cloudberries at all.  Cultivation would make matters a lot easier, but even a group of Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish scientists whose job it is to figure some sort of commercial production out have pretty much written cloudberries off as un-farmable on any large scale.

The berries - which look like pale yellow raspberries - are found, picked and then flash frozen before being sold and made into jam.  They are considered too tart to eat raw.   Per told us that in Sweden, almost 99% of cloudberries picked are made into jam and that jam is almost always eaten warm over ice cream, waffles or pancakes. There is tradition and reverence in the consumption of hjortronsylt.  And the making of it.  They say that the higher the fruit content the better the cloudberry jam. Syltkruken's was delicious, with 60% (that fancy imported stuff we got years ago only had 45%). What does it taste like?   I'd say tart, but bright.  It reminded me of fresh apricot, Merlin of honey, someone else of sour apple.  Maybe there are as many impressions of cloudberries as there are of clouds.

Gypsy Kitchens: Birthday Smörgåstårta

What to make a birthday girl without a sweet tooth?   Luckily, we're in Sweden, the home of smörgåstårta.   "Sandwich cake," as it translates, is not only a traditional celebratory cake, it is also completely unique, semi-bizarre and so much fun to make and eat.   Above, three small cakes make up our batch of smörgåstårtor. Why did we make three?  Well, one is seafood, one is vegetarian and one is meat.  Yes, those pretty little cakes are as savory as can be.   Behold smörgåstårta.

Within an hour of arriving in Sweden, following a Tourist Information sign outside the train station in Göteberg to a shopping mall with a fish market right near its entrance, we'd seen smörgåstårta.   A small white square covered in dill was covered in smoked salmon, tiny shrimp and hard-boiled eggs.  We couldn't figure it out - what's the square made out of?  About a week later, as one of our birthdays dawned, we searched "Swedish birthday cakes" and got our answer. Smörgåstårta is a layer 'cake' made of sandwiches, a pile-up of white or rye bread and spreadable fillings, frosted with mayonnaise, crème fraîche, yogurt, cream cheese or some combination of those.

With smörgåstårta, restraint is thrown out the window.  The cakes, at best, are symphonies of flavor.  At worst, they are sort of grotesque.   When we researched smörgåstårta, there were some focused, elegant creations made of two or three ingredients at most: creamed spinach and salmon salad, pâté and egg salad.  Those were not made by Swedes.  Traditionally, sandwich cakes follow the smörgåsbord (Swedish buffet) all-in model: smoked salmon, shrimp, caviar, pâté, cold cuts, egg, cheese, mayonnaise, vegetables, some or all of the above.  This is not a dish for the indecisive chef, nor the overzealous one - which is why we wound up making three.

The main decision/problem one faces when making smörgåstårta is choosing a bread. Conventionally, the answer is very simple.   Sliced white bread, crusted, is employed most often.   It is firm enough to provide a barrier between layers, sponge-y enough to help it all stick together and - conveniently - already split. However, we wanted ours to be round.   Large hamburger buns work perfectly.   Slice a little bit off the top half of your bun in order to create a flat surface.   This will be your middle layer.   Use the bottom half of your bun for the ground and top layers of your cake - that way you're ensured a level base and a smooth decorating surface.

Choosing your fillings is half the fun.   It's a lot like designing the craziest club sandwich imaginable... with one catch.  There won't be a toothpick holding these layers together and you'll want to be able to slice your finished product like a cake, so make sure not to choose anything that won't stay put.  For example, anyone that's ever bit into a bagel and lox knows that a slice of smoked salmon can get pulled clean out with a single bite.   So, as not to cause catastrophic dismantling, we chopped up our salmon with kitchen shears.  This way, cutting a slice of seafood smörgåstårta would be clean and tidy and the fish would be evenly distributed.

We employed a tried and true salmon binding agent, cream cheese or "Philadelphia," as its called in Europe.   To make it a little easier to work with, we mixed in Greek yogurt until the spread was a mayo-like consistency.  Some chopped dill and shredded romaine lettuce completed the first layer of our seafood smörgåstårta.  The second layer was filled with chopped räk (shrimp) and kräftor (crayfish) mixed with a spicy dijon mustard and diced chives.  Mini shrimp and crayfish, both about the size of a thumbnail, are widely available in grocery stores around Sweden.  Since they are packed in brine, it's best to drain and rinse off the excess salt.  Thin slices of cucumber were thrown in for color and crunch.

Our vegetarian smörgåstårta consisted of a layer of hummus topped with shredded carrot and a layer of diced hard boiled egg and minced red onion mixed with tzaitziki (another common Swedish grocery store item).  Again, cucumber and strips of romaine lettuce were added to the fillings, as well as a good dose of freshly ground black pepper.  This smörgåstårta is, very literally, a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.   We decorated accordingly, with sliced almond around the outside and a carrot on top.

While the veggie smörgåstårta looked the most dessert-like, the meat smörgåstårta was the sweetest.  The bottom layer was liver pâté and lingonberry jam, a Swedish staple that often shows up alongside meatballs, black pudding, liver dishes and meat stew.  The top layer was a healthy coating of our yogurt-cream cheese spread and a pile of paper-thin, bright pink roast beef.  Inspired by all the rose hues, we mixed some chopped beet into our frosting to turn it a bright fuschia.  The cake was jewel-toned and flavor packed thanks to the beets, berries and meat. 

Before frosting, it's best to let your smörgåstårta refrigerate overnight or at least for a few hours. This allows the flavors to mesh and the layers to set.  Frosting a firmer, cold-bunned cake will be much easier. Also, having an easily spreadable frosting is key.  We added thick, plain yogurt to cream cheese until we attained the fluffy frosting texture we wanted.   Make more than you think you'll need.   It's just like frosting a layer cake, you know there will be some unevenness or protrusion that needs a little extra coating to smooth over.   And then you get to decorate!

Making smörgåstårta is sandwich-making, no-bake baking, and a little arts-and-crafts rolled into one.  It's also a cultural experience, a piece of Swedish culinary tradition and a wonderful way to celebrate a birthday. We highly recommend it.

Waffles Vs. Pancakes

The waffles were left to the professionals.  Here we have "Vaffelbui," one of the lower key food tents at Seljord's Dyrsku'n festival.  With no olfactory input, one would think it was some sort of sewing group.  Three ancient women and one man, seated at a long table, each hard at work behind a white machine. All wore colorful floral aprons and made no small talk, focusing on their equipment: a waffle iron, bowl of batter and ladle.  Sweetshop workers.

Waffles are a tradition in Norway, eaten most often as an afternoon snack with a dollop of jam or sour cream and a cup of coffee or tea.  Norwegian waffles have a very specific, very pretty, shape - like a paper snowflake cut to resembles a series of hearts.  Or a five leaf clover, if there was such a thing.  They are light and thin, without the deep ditches of the Belgium variety.  Norway's waffles are foldable, stackable and pretty much uniformly delicious.

As for the pancakes.  Pannekaker are most certainly a traditional food... except, these aren't them.  Don't be fooled by the folk costumes!  Norwegian pancakes look and taste almost identical to crepes and Swedish pancakes.  These fluffy bad boys are much more IHOP than IKEA.  At both the Dyrsku'n fair and the harbor market in Oslo, festively dressed flippers were enlisted to give an extra edge in the great Waffle vs Pancake battle.  Let's call them Flapjack Jills, shall we?  Pretty in their bunads, they poured, flipped and plated the pancakes with smiles.  While the waffles piled up, the American-style pancakes were gone as soon as they were ready.  Pancakes 1, Waffles 0.

The thing about Norwegian waffles is that they're not as time sensitive. The appeal of pancakes is their freshness, the way butter absolutely vanishes into one when its warm. When I was a child, I would go ahead and apply another pat. If I don't see it, I may not taste it! (I went through a chubby phase). Waffles, particularly Norwegian ones, are great at any temperature. Case in point: our first taste of Norwegian vafler was on the ferry from Bergen to Stavanger, a pair of them, folded in half and plastic wrapped. It was around 1pm and everyone was having them. The limp package, plastic wrap and all, was thrown into a microwave before we could shout Holy carcinogen emission, Batman! and served with a tub of bringebær (raspberry) jam.  It hit the spot.   Pancakes 1, Waffles 1.

Testament to the To Go nature of the Norwegian waffle, folding them in half appears to be the favored method of both carrying and eating them.  An afternoon waffle with jam and tea is probably still the ideal waffle eating scenario.  But this is the 21st century and a big wad of folded ones consumed greedily on the go with a cup of coffee somehow balanced on top or below is modern waffling in practice.

Which is maybe why these non-traditional pancake stations are pushing hard for the 'traditional' angle. Perhaps waffles have gotten too commoditized, have been pushed too far from their cast iron origins. The pancakes wind up being a slow food version of the same thing, eaten just about the same way, with the same accoutrements, but on a plate with a knife and fork. Homemade, hand-flipped, fresh off the griddle.

Like the waffles, these flapjacks weren't very sweet, but the toppings on hand were.  Lumpy, sweetened apple sauce, jam, pink strawberry cream and a big bowl of sugar.  Also available for smothering were big, yellow blocks of butter in varying states of decimation.  Again, a hot pancake is pretty much the best thing ever for butter slathering.  The going's always a little bumpier with waffles.  Waffles 1, Pancakes 2.

I was a little surprised by the lack of variation from station to station.  No blueberries thrown into the batter.  No cornmeal or whole grain.  No chocolate chips or chocolate syrup (both blasphemous in my book).   There was an unwritten rule about what these pancakes should be, even if not "Norwegian." Maybe this is the beginning of a new tradition - maybe some people made the switch because it's a lot easier to keep re-using and/or clean a griddle than it is a series of waffle irons.  There's something to be said about the experts chosen to man the Vaffelbui.  We saw many catastrophic gos at our hotel's buffet-breakfast waffle iron.  Style and skill points go to Waffles (and the Vaffelbui crew), for sure.  But you've always got to leave room for new traditions.

Eating With Immigrants in Grønland

Down a flight of stairs, in a bare room with orange walls, Somali men gather in the heart of Norway's capital to eat lunch and sip coffee.  This is the great normalcy of Oslo's Grønland neighborhood, where Iraqis, Vietnamese Kinh, Pakistanis and ethnic Norwegians rub shoulders.  It's a place where the smell of cumin and roasting meat wafts down the alleyways and people of all religions shop at the same Filipino fruit stand.  We ate two lunches and a dinner in Grønland, enjoyed ourselves a lot and discovered something new about what it means to be Norwegian.

Jubba - our downstairs lunch spot - is more popular with the Grønland locals than its famous Somali neighbor, Salaama, which looked louche and red-tinted from the sidewalk.  There, the tables were covered and the atmosphere was almost formal.  At Jubba, formica and counter-service sufficed.  The place was full of regulars, and the word "tourista" made its way from table to table when we came in.
We Americans were given forks and knives, the Somalis ate with their hands.  The menu was given to us verbally: "we have meat, fish or chicken," the chef announced.  Others were given more choice - there were various pastas and a strange type of chopped pancake called canjeelo.  Everyone was given a banana.  A bowl of sauce and a squeeze bottle of spice were put on the table.  The man who brought them said "strong" and "epicé," sucking in his breath to illustrate how hot it was.  Men at other tables repeated the words, one man said "spicy."
The food was really very tasty.  The chicken was moist and well spiced, the fish - coated in ochre powder - was reminiscent of something cooked in a tandoor.

Underneath a skyway, a saturday flea market bubbled with different voices and cultures.  Women in headscarves jostled up against blonde women with tattoos under their t-shirts.  A street away, tired-eyed derelicts drank their morning beers.  Next door, middle-eastern men sipped coffee.  The boulevards of Grønland are full of Turkish barbershops and Persian clothing boutiques.  There are Islamic centers and churches.  It's a place where anybody can feel at home.

At Lahoree Dera, the food was from further east.  We ate Pakistani lamb Lahori haleem and a vegetarian mix of chana and saag.  The spinach and chickpeas were spiced with nutmeg and chili.  The haleem was a thick, orange lentil and lamb paste that stuck to the spoon and had a slow-building heat.  We were served a basket of nan bread to sop it up.

In a testament to the peaceable mixing of cultures, it's not uncommon in Oslo to see restaurants that advertise both "Indiansk" and "Pakistanske" food.  At Lahoree Dera, the line was a little more clear cut.  "The restaurant is Pakistani," the man behind the counter said with certainty.  When I asked him if he was from Lahore, though, he said no.  "I'm from Afghanistan," he chuckled.  The television had advertisements for Afghan cell-phone companies and video clips of rockets flashed on the screen.

Norway has long embraced immigration, especially by asylum seekers and people from war zones.  In Kosovo and Bosnia it seemed as though everyone had a relative here.  While the largest immigrant groups, by far, are Poles and Swedes, they aren't as culturally visible.  The only Polish restaurant we could find was closed when we visited, and Swedish culture is hard (for an outsider) to distinguish from Norwegian.
In contrast, people from the middle east, Africa and South-Asia have become distinct parts of the capital's cultural map. At Cedar Sunrise coffee shop, the Lebanese owners play host to caffeine drinkers from all over the world.  Right on Grønland boulevard, with tables spilling out to the edge of traffic, the cafe is a focal point for local greetings and gossip.  The kaffe au laits were strong and expertly made, the baristas call out to everyone by name.

At Mama Africa, on the second floor of the central bus-station, the Ethiopian food is spicy and served with yards of injera, the porous flatbread so popular in East African cuisine.  A man there told us that his entire family lives in Washington D.C., but that America was "too hot" for him.  He blamed his asthma, and the southern swampiness.  He likes Oslo, but wishes he could be around people he's used to.

The bus station was full of people rushing from place to place - most of them didn't even seem to notice the dark restaurant serving doro wat and beyaynetu.  Those that did stop in seemed to be a mixture of the curious and the practiced.  Mama Africa was a pleasant mix of cultures - there were Ethiopian friends of the owners, Norwegian families, tourists from continental Europe, the two American travelers and a few Indian young people.  We all ate with our hands, drank coffee and listened to the mixing of languages.  It was fun, it felt like Oslo, we left very full.

Wharfside Norway

In Arendal, we finally gave in to the pier pressure.  It's a particular societal pressure, to turn your chair outward toward the water and have a mid-day beer.  Arendal is known for its pretty, chi-chi dock and for its local beer (delicious Arendals).  On a sunny Saturday afternoon, people pulled in on their motorboats from the suburbs that are scattered across the nearby islands and peninsulas.  Most of these well-heeled brunchers were heading to join the rosé sipping set.  We joined the already settled in crowd at Fiskebrygga ("Fish Wharf").  A different sort of 'in' crowd.  The type we always feel lucky to join.

The older set at Fiskebrygga carried newspaper cones to their tables, filled with golden brown fish and chips.  We ordered the fiskekaker - a flattened and fried version of fiskeboller.  The Fish Wharf professes that these are the best fish cakes on the southern coast.  The trio of fish and flour patties, which oddly resemble English muffins in this photo, tasted elegant, a little sweet, dense but fluffy.  They were served pub-style, with potato salad, a packaged tab of butter and some slices of white bread.  The thing about dock-sides is that they have a salty quality about them.  There's something that makes you want to use your hands, have something a little greasy or a little messy.  Something completely simple. 

At the center of Pollen, the name of Arendal's rectangular inner harbor, this fishing boat sold peel-and-eat shrimp, small crabs and big ones - which were split in half by hand before being bagged up for customers.  It was the sort of harbor lunch that you brought home to enjoy, at least here in Arendal where the crowd isn't necessarily one to sit on the steps and tear into shellfish.  The scene is something we now expect from a Norwegian dock.  Norway is the world's second largest exporter of seafood (after China) - but there's still plenty kept in the country to go around.

Reker, shrimp, most often show up in piles atop halved round rolls and stuffed into split baguettes with a slice of lemon on top and bed of mayo below.  But this is how Norwegians like their little pink crustaceans best.  Into the gusty port air, a plume of shellfish steam goes up like a smoke signal.  Open for business!  It was the first thing we saw when we stepped off the ferry in Stavanger.  This man, sorting through his freshly steamed catch.  The scampi (long clawed mini lobsters with a body about the length of a cigar) were separated out and placed in a blue, plastic bag.  The rest were available to be scooped up and weighed and given to waiting customers.

Stavanger's harbor was that perfect mix of luxury and grit.  Of life by the water and life on the water.  Boat shoes and neck tattoos.  As Merlin put it earlier, Stavanger's history is one of 'depression and wealth, boom and bust' all tied to the sea.  So, its dockside life has that extra edge of energy that comes from a sense of desperation. I've always loved the term 'watering hole,' because there's a suggestion that there's something life giving, thirst quenching and habitual about visits and returns.  Sometimes, it just fits a place so well... and dockside pubs are often that place.  Under the canvas awnings outfitted with heat lamps, men find the drop to drink they craved so much when they were out there with water, water everywhere.

A raucous maritime bar wreaks of jubilation to be back on land, but also a strange sense of sorrow to have left the sea.  At least, I get that sense.  Piers have an atmosphere all there own.  The way the water intensifies sunlight and seagulls squawk energetically, hit the senses sharply.  But then there's a rhythm to it that builds up.  There's that melodically melancholy squeaking of docked boats, the creak of their wood, heavy like sighs.  And when you watch kids sit on the edge of a quay looking out, you can almost see them creating a memory that they won't necessarily think of in words.  Above, the wharf in Oslo - a tip of a calm in a great, busy city.

Of course, Oslo's harbor had its resident shrimp boat, scooping out servings.  There were at least fifty tents set up this Saturday, some sort of food festival that included farmer's stands, outposts of the Norwegian grocery chain Meny and a ridiculous array of prepared food.  It was everything from chicken and rice to waffles and baked goods, an all you can eat herring station and the requisite fish and chips.  But the shrimp guy was still there taking care of his loyal customers.  When you're docked in the water, it's a lot harder to get lost in a crowd.