Let's Talk About Food

The Good 

Pastries. I mean that kind of goes without saying, but I especially liked the pastries in the areas we visited.  Cinnamon seems to be the most common flavor (and I love me some cinnamon!) with cardamom as a close second.  Generally the pastries were not as sweet as we would find in North America, and I describe the cinnamon rolls as a marriage between a North American cinnamon roll and a croissant – flakier, lighter and less sweet.  The cardamom versions were also a delight when we wanted something a little different. In the interest of science, I tasted many, many samples to be able to provide a statistically significant opinion. You’re welcome. 

Wild game.  It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that we saw some form of game on every menu. I know a lot of people don’t care for the gamey taste, but I quite like wild game both for the taste as well as the fact that it is the antithesis of factory farmed meat so I was pleased to see it is so prevalent in the region.  I sampled elk, deer and reindeer. I think this means that Santa will no longer come see me. 

Swedish meatballs.  On the breakfast buffet, our hotel in Stockholm offered tiny little meatballs that tasted like the best breakfast sausage you could ever imagine, times ten and dipped in chocolate. They weren’t actually dipped in chocolate – they just tasted that good.  Dinner meatballs served with mashed potatoes, gravy, pickled cucumber and lingonberry jam (think cranberry relish but less tart) made us very happy too. 

Tomato and cucumber slices with breakfast and on every sandwich.  This one took some getting used to first thing in the morning, but every single one of our hotel breakfast buffets in Finland, Sweden and Estonia served them every day. So I tried them every day since I like to embrace the local cuisine.  The tomatoes were not that much of a stretch but I’m not the biggest cuke fan at any meal and breakfast just seemed weird. I grew to enjoy the fresh burst it added to my plate in the morning though. Kind of like melon but without the sweetness. And it made me feel all superior and healthy as I started my day. Cukes may show up as a breakfast garnish chez Bourdages soon. From the first bite I became a fan of the crunch they add to sandwiches.

Use of seasonal produce.  Given the overwhelming prominence of root vegetables on the menus, I can only assume that the Nordic food culture emphasizes eating what’s in season. Or they are addicted to root vegetables and the menu doesn’t change throughout the year. Hard to say really. And cukes were an obvious exception to the rule! 

The European approach to food and eating generally. It’s been awhile since we’ve been in Europe and I had forgotten how different attitudes toward food can be.  Now, I’m about to make some ridiculously broad generalizations that won’t be true across the board but don’t beat me up about stereotyping – I just want to provide a flavor of things that stood out to me in contrast to what I see as a trend in North American food mores.  So here we go. Europeans eat real food. They aren’t all about the latest fad diet and superfoods – you should have seen me on my two week search to find a “mean green juice.” Yeah, no juicing hype over there. They just eat the damn vegetables and fruit.  There is none of this “OMG don’t eat [fill in the blank] because it will kill you.” For example, sugar and pastries aren’t labeled as “bad.” People simply seem to understand that they are treats that should be entirely guilt-free yet infrequent. Unless of course you are just visiting then it is perfectly acceptable to average four pastries per day.  Personally, I prefer the less drama filled European approach.

The Bad

The taste. OK, that’s kind of mean and maybe too harsh, but here’s the thing. I’m an uncomfortable carnivore at best – I like meat (more than I wish I did) but each bite causes a lot of wheels to turn in my head as I weigh the pros and cons.  The culinary skills of the cooks that prepared our meals were not exactly fantastic. The food wasn’t awful, but if you are going to kill an animal, you at least need to respect it and make the meal awesome. I stopped ordering meat entirely because it felt like a waste. And while I applaud the use of seasonal produce, an out of season spinach leaf here and there would have made me happy. Ethical considerations aside, they just need to jazz up their recipes a bit.  On the upside, the locals appear to really appreciate Italian food if the number of Italian restaurants is any indication. We supplemented local fare with a lot of risotto.

Pickled herring.  No qualifiers here. It is truly horrible. Every. Single. Breakfast. Often the breakfast buffets offered several varieties: Spiced with anchovies. Swimming in tomato sauce. Smothered in mustard and dill sauce.  I could go on.  As a good little traveler I put a tiny morsel on my plate each morning in the hopes it would grow on me. And each morning I had to choke it down. It is pretty rough before I’m even properly caffeinated.  Choosing between evils, the dill-mustard one is the least offensive because the dill is strong enough to mask the flavor a bit. Unfortunately dill can’t fix the texture. And I love sushi so it’s not like I’m fish squeamish. Pickled herring is just bad bad bad. Eeyuck! [Shudder]

Marzipan. There is an unholy obsession with marzipan in the region. Keep that stuff off of my croissant please. 

The Just OK 

Coffee. I had such high hopes for a superior coffee experience during this trip.  The coffee I mainlined drank in Iceland years ago was indescribably good, and consistently so throughout the country.  Seriously – we stopped for gas and the cup of coffee I bought out of an automatic machine ranks as one of the best I’ve ever tasted. I don’t know if it is the mineral content in their water or a well developed coffee culture, but it would almost be a reason to move there.  I expected a similar experience, especially after reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (it is true, many of my expectations for this trip were based on the book) – the characters can’t make it more than three paragraphs without stopping for strong coffee. These are my people! Sadly, the coffee was average. Finally on our last full day we saw a sidewalk sign in Helsinki “coffee and fresh baked goods” and followed the arrow down a small street to a charming café. FINALLY a cup of regular coffee that had some attitude. I had to double the amount of sugar, and it was awesome.  But one good cup does not a great coffee region make. I have to give it to Iceland for coffee and Italy for the espresso. The others are wannabes.

A side note about lattes in Finland.  Throughout the region, lattes were fine because espresso is naturally strong enough to be interesting. The lattes in Finland were pretty anemic, though, because even though the coffee part was good, the milk was weak.  The Finns prefer skim milk, never the best choice for a latte (said this whole milk girl).  And by “prefer” I mean that this freezing cold country has ice cream on every menu and in every shop because apparently they have an excess of cream to use up since no one will use any milk but skim.  I find that fascinating.

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While I can’t rave over the Nordic cuisine, I had a blast as we experimented and tried new things, and the food in Stockholm (the most cosmopolitan of the places we visited) was actually pretty good. Overall I think it was a positive experience because we did not expect it to be a foodie trip – it’s not as if we were in France or Italy, but instead in a land of hearty meals. A meat-and-potatoes-get-it-done kind of food culture. And at least the pickled herring produced some funny faces.