Street food

Rovaniemi to Helsinki, December 17, 2015—

ROVANIEMI IS A CITY of many charms, and we're leaving it too soon. One of the charms is this fine restaurant, with simple, beautifully prepared food, an interesting clientele to watch, and — that word again — charming service. So for a last meal in this northern capital — of Lapland — we returned, and for the first time thought about one of the components of its name: Streetfood. Since we were having lunch, not dinner, that seemed appropriate.

I ordered what you might call pulled reindeer: the meat sliced and cut into bits, then sautéed, and made into a sandwich with delicious cole slaw, shredded lettuce, lingonberry jam, "red sauce" and Dijon-mayonnaise, all on a nice soft bun, and so generous it had to be eaten with knife and fork.

The meat was quite gamy. It was farmed, of course: I'm told there hasn't been an undomesticated reindeer in Lapland for a century or so. But it was wild in taste, very gamy; and the lingonberry jam made a lot of sense, taming the flavors. The whole thing was really a success, and those French fries!

Red, of course, but I've forgotten what… I write this two days later…

•Ravintola Roka Street Bistro, Lh2, Ainonkatu 3, Rovaniemi, Finland; 050 3116411

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DINNER WAS SIMPLY a salad and a sandwich on the overnight train south to Helsinki. It was surprisingly good, with mâche, of all things, in the salad…
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Risotto

Rovianemi, December 16, 2015—

NO, THAT ISN'T RISOTTO, it's the local version of a Martini, made with Martini Bianco instead of Dry, served with a lemon because the bar doesn't have any of those green olives, in a stemless Martini glass nestlig atop a bowl of crushed ice. In fact I like the occasional Martini-with-bianco-instead-if-dry, and I always prefer lemon to olive. And the glass seems like a pretty good idea.

The risotto will be found at the foot of this post. It was dense, a little gluey, but not unpleasant; very discreetly flecked with tiny shavings of white truffle. The ham had that intense, loamy flavor I associate with good Spanish Serrano ham. The arugula was a nice touch — the first I've had in quite a while!

•21 Cafe & Bar, Rovakatu 21, Rovaniemi, 040 8117037
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Bistro in the arctic

Rovaniemi, Finland, December 15, 2015—

WELL, PERHAPS NOT quite the arctic: we're technically eight kilometers south of it. But it is c o l d.

And yet there's a bistro. There's no question it's a bistro: there it is, steak-frites, with Béarnaise sauce. You can't ask for more proudly traditional a bistro standby.

The beef was delicious — Finnish-raised (and "finished") Black Angus, well salted, pan-fried, saignant ; Everything I always like in one hunk of protein.The Béarnaise was a teeny bit lemony, but settled in very nicely, both literally and figuratively. The whole thing sat in a pool of well-made marchand de vin sauce, and came with four slightly sautéed cherry tomatoes, a nice touch. And the fries were clean and crisp outside, soft and smooth inside, well salted, and they tasted of fresh potato. What's not to like?

Glögi Koskenkorva (because, after all, it's Christmastime);
Nebbiolo, Fontanafredda Ebbio, 2013 (woody and old-fashioned, but opening nicely)

•Ravintola Roka Street Bistro, Lh2, Ainonkatu 3, Rovaniemi, Finland; 050 3116411
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Julbord

Umeå, Sweden, December 14, 2015—

WHAT YOU SEE HERE is the first of four or five courses of the Julbord served today at a nice little bistro on the outskirts of town. Jul is, of course, Yule; apparently a special Christmas smörgåsbord has replaced the normal menu here. (Too bad: it's always nice to sample traditional bistro fare in a new town.)

The red pot with the lid and handles contains nice steamed potatoes flecked with chopped parsley; the bowls to the left are filled with six different flavors of herring; the rectangular platters involve salmon in various forms. There were also shrimpy items which I of course did not sample.

In the distance beyond, left to right, you have an impressive array of spirits, a sideboard laden with many desserts, and a tray of cheeses. But those, of course, are the fourth and fifth courses: before them, out of sight on the right, are two others. The first of them was charcuterie, and I'm afraid I so loaded myself down there that I wasn't able to do the cheeses justice. There was ham, roast beef, various sausages, pork belly (oh my, the pork belly) — I mistook all this for the main course, but in that I was mistaken.

To the right of the charcuterie, being served out as needed by the cooks, there were little hot Vienna-type sausages, and red cabbage, and a marvelous local specialty involving potatoes and anchovies, and a lithe and supple omelet — almost an Eggs Picabia — with porcini and chanterelles neither of which somehow detracted from the other.

And I know I'm forgetting things, but then I do that, first of all, and secondly the conversation was so interesting, and the waitresses so entertaining, and the food so good, that it was hardly the time to take either notes or for that matter photos of any value.

Mâcon-Villages, Domaine Moulin de Foulot, 2013, very nice, authentic, and crisp; and a small akvavit afterward, since Fernet is temporarily discontinued

All that jazz

Stockholm, December 12, 2015—

LAST MEAL FOR NOW in Stockholm: we decide on another low-visibility joint; one of the Fifty Greatest Restaurants can wait its turn. And we dine early, because we're catching a ten o'clock train out of town.

The venue is a tiny jazz bistro, clearly the haunt of locals and regulars. It seats maybe twenty diners and a jazz quartet, and the featured dish is mussels. I dearly love mussels but decide on red meat: lamb steak in red wine sauce, with a green salad, a stuffed pepper, and a clutch of very nice Frnch fries.

The lamb had good flavor and was cooked to exactly the right degree of rosiness. And the music was first rate. This was our fourth perfectly satisfying dinner in Stockholm in four days.

Sauvignon blanc, then Cote du Rhone

•Glenn Miller Jazz Cafe, Brunnsgatan 21A, Stockholm; 08-10 03 22
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Lunch at the museum

Stockholm, December 11, 2015—

IT CAN BE LESS than ideal — what can't — but lunch in the museum is often a pleasant respite. We've enjoyed lunch at the de Young in San Francisco, at LACMA in Los Angeles, at the Prado in Madrid, the Stedlijk in The Hague, and today the Moderna Museet.

To tell the truth the meal is eclipsed by the view: you look out over the water toward the waterfront of Östermalm, which always reminds me of the Fondamenta San Giorgio, if that's what it's called, in Venice, though it looks like it only in terms of light and orientation. The photo here was taken at 2 pm, a little late for lunch and certainly early, by our standards, for twilight, but there you are: high latitude near midwinter.

But I digress. Lunch, which also stood us for dinner as we were going to an early concert, was the long buffet table, whose daily special was what I call hamburger. When I was young it was also called Salisbury steak; I don't know why. It came in a nice enough gravy, and was accompanied by those delicious little roast potatoes and onions we've come to expect. Also a slice of dill pickle.

I helped myself to green salad, with vinegar and olive oil, and cabbage slaw, and a sort of couscous salad with garbanzos, too, because we all know we depend on roughage.

Cabernet sauvignon, MJ Janéil, François Lurton, 2013: sound, good flavor, well balanced, young even in the tiny bottle

•Moderna Museet Café, Exercisplan, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Tartare

Stockholm, December 10, 2015—

YOU MAY RECALL my fondness for steak tartare; I've written about it here a number of times — last May it became a running idée fixe the blog. And when dear Catharina mentioned, in a note, a favorite restaurant here, and that restaurant turned out to be something of a traditional bistro, naturally my hopes began to run in that direction.

And there it was on the menu: Råbiff med tillbehör, helpfully translated by Google as "steak tartare with accessories." The latter arrived in a cunning stack of porcelain dishes which swing out from their chrome-plated standard. I don't know what epoch that accessory represents; this is a very traditional kind of place — the restaurant is three hundred years, my waitress tells me; it's been in this room since 1905, and I think not that much has changed in the meantime.

The beef was good; and, importantly, it was hand-chopped, not ground. The capers were delicious; the egg fresh and flavorful. And those delightful dishes offered diced beets (declined), little capers, mustard, and chopped shallots and salt, a thoughtful inclusion

The French fries were very good — Sweden has fine potatoes — and a little copper pot, tinned of course, contained quartered tomatoes and chopped onion that set things off nicely. Truly a delicious meal, a fitting successor to yesterday's equally traditional table.

Madiran, Château Beaucaire, 2009: solid, proper, and inexpensive

•Mäster Anders, Pipersgatan 1, Stockholm; 08-654 20 01
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants