Reykjavík Grapevine - jún. 2023, Síða 32

The Reykjavík Grapevine 6 / 23 32Food
WORDS Shruthi Basappa
IMAGES Art Bicnick
“Ostpaj med murklor”
is scribbled on the blackboard in
front of me. “What is a cheese pie?”
I ask, embarrassed about my lack of
know ledge. The chef-waiter at Arla
Unika, a Stockholm institution built
on all things dairy, shrugs. “It’s like a
quiche and we serve it with a mush-
room sauce.” What arrives, however,
is a warm, wobbling hulk of a slice
of molten yellow custard, seeming-
ly held in place by sheer will and a
buttery tart shell. The “mushroom
sauce” turned out to be morels
– I was expecting buttons. That my
friends and I tucked into the pie with
gusto is an understatement. We ate
with abandon, delighted with the
warm savory custard whose nonde-
script nomenclature had surpassed
itself. Moments like these are the
highlight of any dining experience;
the unexpected joys, the feeling
where you get more than you antici-
pated.
When I got back to Reykjavík, I
promptly dove into all things Väster-
bottenostpaj. The cousin of quiche
has a filling of eggy custard with
milk, whole eggs, sometimes cream
and always Västerbottenost – a
sharp aged cheese whose popu-
larity has resulted in shortages in
Sweden – all baked in a pastry shell.
Internet searches yield quiche- or
pie-like variations, but the version
I had at Arla Unika stands out. What
is otherwise a home-cooked com-
fort food was elevated to a fine
dining experience in a casual café
setting, with its prodigious use of
technique, underlining what makes
restaurant food distinct from home
cooking.
If you are wondering why I am wax-
ing eloquent about a cheese pie I
ate in Sweden, when we are meant
to be talking about Reykjavík, it is
because this dish was that push I
needed to put my long simmering
thoughts into words about the fever
of dullness that has gripped the
dining scene here.
As a food critic, I eat out more than
your average diner. New York Times
critic Pete Wells once estimated
about 800 meals on the job. Our
playgrounds are vastly different, but
I suspect the eateries visited runs
into the several hundreds, too. And
despite the glamorous appeal of
trying new places, food writing and
food critique is a privileged slog.
My own take on it has been to write
about places I want more people to
go and enjoy for themselves rather
than doing slam pieces (which may
garner more attention, I am painfully
aware of, but resist nonetheless).
This is something I learned from my
old editor, Kripal Ammanna, at Food
Lovers in India, as far back as 2010
– a sentiment Mr. Wells subscribes
to as well.
Contrast that casual Stockholm
lunch with a dinner I had at a recently
opened Japanese-Italian restaurant
in Reykjavík. I left deeply hurt and,
if I’m being honest, angry. Was I ex-
pecting a Niko Romito experience
by way of Tokyo? Kinda, but with a
healthy Nordic reality check. Instead,
our table (incidentally all Icelanders
with Asian backgrounds) squirmed
with discomfort with each new plate.
The menu claims heritage from two
places firmly rooted in technique
and produce vastly different from
the other. What we were served was
neither Japanese nor Italian and far
from a fusion of the two.
TROPES TRUMP
TECHNIQUE
The trouble isn’t with this particular
restaurant alone. Menus across
the country and the recipes of food
bloggers appearing on popular web-
sites and in newspapers are a pale
imitation of the originals they claim
to be a version of. This isn’t about
authenticity, but about understand-
ing the essence of what makes a
particular dish what it is. It is about
understanding that rice being a
principal ingredient in both doesn’t
make risotto and grjónagrautur the
same.
History is rife with erasures, imposi-
tions and assimilation of influences.
All of these histories, old and new,
play out on plates around us – like
enslaved West Africans who wove
seeds into their hair to literally and
figuratively birth a cuisine in a land
different from their home; Dalits who
remain ostracised under the guise
of food purity; and, more recently,
the raging debates over syrniki and
its Slavic heritage in the background
of the Ukrainian war. Closer to home,
Icelandic staples from pönnukökur
to vínarterta are borne out of both
scarcity and trade monopolies im-
posed by Danish colonisers.
Food is an agent of change and con-
trol. It isn’t mere sustenance. What
Feature Wake Up, Reykjavík!
The dining slumber that afflicts the hospitality industry has got to shake loose

SÆTA SVÍNIÐ / Hafnarstræti 1-3 / Tel. 555 2900 / saetasvinid.is
990 1.690
HAPPIEST
HAPPY HOUR
IN REYKJAVÍK
ICELANDIC GASTROPUB
This isn’t about authenticity,
but rather about understand-
ing the essence of what makes
a particular dish what it is. It is
about understanding that rice
being a principal ingredient in
both doesn’t make risotto and
grjónagrautur the same.