Scandinavians really are a cheerful bunch, or at least that’s what they want us to believe at Scandinavian Kitchen, where flags from each of the Nordic countries grace the tables, you can purchase Spunk liquorice, Plop chocolate and Moomin cookbooks, and Abba and Lady Gaga are played on heavy rotation, prompting one customer to exclaim “I didn’t know she was Scandinavian?!”
The clientele seems to be made up of local workers here for lunch and Scandinavian housewives with their cherubic children who’ve popped in for the Monmouth coffee or to buy pickled beetroot and rye bread rolls from the supermarket section at the back.
For lunch, there are hot dogs and soups as well as a smorgasbord of sandwiches and/or salads to choose from, priced at £5.25 for three or £8.25 for five. We chow down on colourful open sandwiches of miniature pork and beef meatballs with beetroot, the Skagenröra seafood salad which consists of prawns with heaps of mayo and dill, thickly sliced Swedish cheese (a little like Edam) on rye bread topped with slithers of radish, liver pate hidden beneath a mound of lettuce, and little plastic pots of Danish pickled herring in a sweet mustard sauce.
Cakes are made freshly on the premises; one is labelled a “sinful” banana cake, a tag which could equally apply to the intense, gooey chocolate cake with whipped cream. Other teatime snacks include a crumbly baked coconut macaroon, fluffy Danish tea cakes covered in chocolate and marzipan layered with rum and chocolate. There are sparkling berry juices and blueberry “soup” sold in cartons, however the Aquavit and mixed fruit ciders can only be bought to consume off the premises as they don’t have a licence. It’s too much of a happy, family place for that.
