Saturday, April 23, 2005

Akvavit – Smorgasbord on the lunch menu

27 New Bridge Road
#02-00
Tel: 65326468

Scandinavian food is what they serve, here, but from the mini Danish flags and the visit Denmark posters they have on their walls, it might have a Danish slant, but really, I don’t see the difference between Danish or Swedish food unless someone is going to educate me on the nuances, so I shall safely categorise it as - Scandinavian. They only serve sandwiches and the good old herring and salmon, but if you are looking for a nice bowl of hot soup, this really isn’t the place. Lunch here reminds me of Europe and sandwich and cold cuts lunches that I miss on occasion and try to recreate with my almost daily cheese sandwiches.


Shooting Star

Nosh: We shared everything so we could taste almost everything that we wanted, but servings are small so you can probably enough to cover your table and you’ll be able to finish it if you had a party of 4.

To start off, we had the herring done three ways – spicy, tomato and traditional, half and half which is salmon done two ways – Smoked Baltic Sea Salmon and Salmon gravad lax marinated. Following which, we had a selection of 3 sandwiches, but really they aren’t sandwiches in the way you will conceive them, but rather they are open sandwiches. From the selection of about 10-12, we had the shooting star, which is a mixture of cold seafood, port roast which is a house speciality and of course, the good old ‘Frikadeller’ meatball which is a classic.

Pay: Open-face sandwiches are S$9-S$17, Dinner Entrées average about S$25.

Rave: Nice and quiet spot for you have a Smorgasbord of sorts.

Room for Improvement: The open kitchen concept allowed me to observe that they plated our food and left it there sitting and waiting for something to happen. I can’t believe how long they took to prepare our food considering we were the only table.

* The Swedish word "smörgåsbord" comes from smörgås = sandwich and bord = table. "Smörgås" (sandwich) in turn comes from smör = (literally smear, ointment) butter and gås = (literally goose) pieces of butter formed on top of cream when churning butter.

Smorgasbord is an anglification of the Swedish word Smörgåsbord. It is a buffet style table in a restaurant, or a holiday feast at home, prepared with many small dishes. For a fixed amount of money, you are allowed to eat as many of these as you wish.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You obviously don't drink and know nothing about North European food. Sweeden has horrible food that best compair to East European prison food. While Danes make lushious dishes with loads of taste and loads of love, but you have to drink and be in good company to fully enjoy this kind of food. And don't be in a hurry.

11:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This restaurant is Danish, not Swedish. There are subtle differences between the cuisines of the two countries so don't pool them together as one. It is not called "smörgåsbord" in Danish, but "smørrebrød". And yes, Scandinavian food needs to be enjoyed slowly over a lot of chat and a few shots of the famous "akvavit" after which the restaurant is named.

11:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Swedish food is of course not like prison food. Smörgåsbord is a fantastic combination of LOADS of different kind of foods. You can choose between both cold and warm variants. Meat, fish, vegetables and you do not even have to eat bread, but you can choose what ever by your own choice. Do not forget the akvavit, it helps the herring to swim down through your stomach.

If you want to have a simple, but delicious lunch then I would really recommend a Danish sandwich or as the Danes call them "smørrebrød"

2:42 AM  
Anonymous Skånepåg said...

Woah woah, do not say Danes are the same as Swedes. It's a pretty thorny issue but it's nothing more than a brotherly squabble today. They used to go to war over that. I lived in Skåne at the southernmost tip of Sweden just across from Denmark so I felt it first hand.

1:44 AM  

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