Critics’ choice: The spread of New Nordic cuisine

Aska Brooklyn

If your idea of Scandinavian food is meatballs from Ikea, you aren’t getting enough, said Adam Platt in New York magazine. Nordic cuisine is decidedly “of the moment”—at least for the type of diners aware that Copenhagen’s Noma has followed the Nordic muse to “best restaurant in the world” status. New York City’s latest answer can be found in a place that looks “at first glance” like a caricature of a 2013 Brooklyn restaurant—a scant seven tables set in a spare art gallery and attended to by a bearded waitstaff and a noted cocktail master. But though chef Fredrik Berselius doesn’t have a nearby forest available for Noma-style foraging, he and his team “do an admirable job with what they have of making you feel connected, in a mannered, priestly sort of way, to the edifying culinary variety that’s available in the great outdoors.” Recently, his $65 tasting menu included crackers made of dehydrated pig’s blood and a “mulch-y concoction” of root vegetables that “tasted bracing in a faintly medicinal way.” But wash the more challenging courses down with a cocktail and focus instead on Berselius’s master strokes—like a dumpling made with potatoes and pork belly, served in a pool of smoky farmer’s cheese flavored with fennel fronds and lingonberries. 90 Wythe Ave., (718) 388-2969

The Bachelor Farmer Minneapolis

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It only makes sense that Minnesota should have a restaurant at the forefront of the New Nordic movement, said Alex Van Buren in Bon Appétit. The Bachelor Farmer, created by two brothers who are sons of the governor and scions of the Target family empire, has generated national buzz by hanging lace curtains and “homey” wallpaper in a warehouse space, planting a garden on the roof, and focusing on cured fish, fresh fish, and house-made breads. The place “seats a mixed crew: 90-year-old women scarf their Swedish meatballs elbow to elbow with young hipsters.” You’ll want to try the open-faced sandwiches known as smorrebrod—featuring duck pâté, salt-cured salmon, or bacon confit. And any meal here should start downstairs at the Marvel Bar, where Pip Hanson “mixes the town’s best drinks, including a Tom Collins gone native with pickle brine and aquavit.” 50 N. 2nd Ave., (612) 206-3920

Plaj San Francisco

The Bay Area’s first Scandinavian restaurant feels like a gift, said Michael Bauer in the San Francisco Chronicle. Soon after chef Roberth Sundell took over an elegant 44-seat space next door to the city’s opera house, he “began weaving together such distinctive ingredients as cloudberries, herring, and ground cherries with a pristine California bounty.” To win herring converts, Sundell creates various small plates that pair the strong-tasting fish with bold accompaniments, like tomatoes and saffron, or soy, ginger and lime. He also makes a “beautifully realized” sashimi of white fish with hot dill oil, pickled onions, ginger, and crisp shallots. Diners can find letdowns here—like roast chicken drowning in a too-salty mustard sauce. But “Sundell’s brilliance returns in some of the traditional dishes,” including his Swedish meatballs. Served on a bed of potato puree, they “rise above the cliché.” 333 Fulton St., (415) 294-8925