FoodNet

The gourmet's guide to Europe

1903

Page 202

Presented as published in 1903. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
At the Swedish Brighton, a very simple and very pretty village amidst the pines on a fjord where small yachts lie at anchor on the placid water, and a score of little islands have tea-houses amidst the trees, and little piers jut out into the wavelets, and bathing sheds are on the brink of the water, there are a half-dozen of hotels and restaurants at all of which the prices are surprisingly cheap. At the Grand Hotel I was given a copious smorgasbord , fried fish, stewed fruit, unlimited bread, butter, and cheese ; a pint of Swedish beer or any other simple beverage was at my service, and the charge was i k^. 50 ore, or about is. 8d. Storvik At Storvik, a station on the Storlieu line, there is a restaurant which is celebrated throughout Railway Sweden. You are charged 2 kr., Restaurant, which is the price of a meal at all storvik railway refreshment rooms, and help yourself at a big central table, crayfish soup, fish, meat, poultry, game, and sweets all being included in the meal, and a glass of light beer. Grand Hotel Sweden 377 Gothenburg The restaurant of the Haglund is a good one, and I gjve one of the menus of its The Haglund dinner at 3 kr. : — \ Soppa. Potage a la Parmentier. Fisk. Saumon grillee a la maitre d’hotel. Kottratt. Langue de Bceuf Garni. Sauce aux Olives, ou Fricandeau de veau aux pois. Stek. Poulet a la Printanier. Compotes. Efterratt. Bavaroise hollandaise ou Framboises. XXI NORWAY The Christiana Restaurants — Throndhjem. Norway is not a happy hunting-ground for the gourmet. At the best of the dining-places the food is plain food well cooked ; at the other dining-places it is plain food indifferently cooked. Salmon, halibut, and ptarmigan are the variations from beef, bread, milk, and vegetables, and salmon and ptarmigan after a time pall on the palate. Christiana The restaurant at the Victoria Hotel at Christiana was the ground of most of my experiments in the Victoria cookery of Norway, and I felt grate- ful to the cook for making a young ptarmigan quite an eatable bird. The Hotel Scan- dinavie, one of the other three hotels of the city, adver- tises that its cookery is both French and Norwegian. I ate an evening meal at the brown-walled "restaurant attached to the Tivoli Gardens, where there is a theatre m. .. of varieties, and found the Tournedos and the halibut there very much the same as they are anywhere else in the north. Holmenkollen, 1000 feet up the mountain behind , „ Christiana, has its hotel and restaurants, Holmenkollen . . . 7 u , . . . 7 which are well worth visiting, not so much for the food, which is of the simplest descrip- 378 Norway 379 tion, as for the wonderful views. The room in which lunch is served, strapping Norwegian girls taking the place of the usual waiters, is a copy of the big room in an old Norwegian farm. There is a small cafe in the grounds of the hotel which is also a model of an old Norwegian house. Frognersaeter, further up the mountain on which is the Holmenkollen, and Ekeberg, are also famous for their views, and at each place there is a cafe. AFTER DINNER Wishing to do in Christiana as the Norwegians do, I attended a performance of one of Ibsen’s plays in a theatre built after the model of a Greek temple. As I do not know a word of Norwegian, I did not find the performance exhilarating. My experiences at the Tivoli were far more entertaining. Throndhjem