Swedish Food - Post 1

Hej hej!

This is going to be the first of what I'm sure will be many posts about food in Sweden.

Let's start in order of what I've had so far:

1) A Shrimp Sandwich from the Heaven 23, a restaurant located on the top of Gothia Towers. The restaurant had a view overlooking the city, but since I forgot my camera, I don't have a picture to share. I was, however, able to ask someone to take a picture of my food for me. The sandwich was great - good balance of shrimp, mayo, eggs, and a bit of rye bread.

2) A co-worker brought in "crispy" bread for me to try. It kinda tastes like plain crackers. The one that I'm holding in the picture is the traditional version because the hole in the middle was used for drying the bread. A pole could carry multiple pieces of bread on it (through the holes) to let them dry and become crispy. 

3) Richard, my co-worker, also brought me sour milk to try. It was basically thin yogurt that smelled a bit sour. Apparently it's good for your digestive system. I had some with sugar and most people here also put crispy bread in it. 

4) Richard then brought in this salted licorice candy for me to try. Let me be honest - I wasn't a fan. The licorice was coated with an ammonium chloride salt that made it taste really odd and then once the salt was gone, the hard licorice stuck to your teeth. After passing the candy around the room, I've concluded that only Swedish people who had this candy as kids, liked it. All of us "foreigners" don't seem to like it. The package of the candy has a screaming monkey on it! 

3) Next, someone brought an amazing almond cake to work. It was a bit dense and absolutely scrumptious! I didn't take a picture of it, but I stole one off the internet of what it looked like. 

  4) One day at lunch I went to this Indian-Italian Restaurant near Chalmers. It sounds odd, but my professor told me that I had to try the kebab pizza. I ordered it expecting it to be a pan-pizza size, and it turns out it was on a plate bigger than my head. I only had half of it for lunch, but it was delicious. The ranch balanced out the kebab nicely. 

After eating at multiple Thai restaurants in town, I've figured out that Thai food here is the equivalent of Chinese food back home. It's quite popular and there are restaurants everywhere. My mentor explained to me that Swedes often go to Thailand on vacation during the winter months in Sweden, which is why the food is so popular here. 

I also visited the Pizza Hut here with some co-workers. In Sweden it is more of a sit-down restaurant kind of equivalent to Chile's back home, but with fewer menu options. We all ate the pizza with a fork and knife even though it was a deep dish pizza I would have scarfed down with just my hands back home. People in Sweden tend to use utensils a lot more than we do in America, and way more than people do in India. Luckily no one has made fun of my table manners yet! 

Lastly, here is a picture of the candy aisle at just about every grocery store in Sweden. It's very popular to bag your own candy here. I haven't tried it yet since I'm still finishing up some Finnish Chocolate, but I'm sure I'll have trouble making decisions when I do start to pack my candy. 

On a random note, I figured out the significance of the statue I saw in the downtown area of Gothenburg. It's called Kopparmärra and is a statue of Charles IX who founded the precursor to Gothenburg. There is some interesting history behind the statue that you can find by clicking here. Here is my touristy photo in front of the statue! 

Alright - sorry about the long blog post, but food is important. Hope I didn't leave you too hungry! 

Until next time, 

Dilpreet