Foodhalls, Dancehalls, really we need more -halls in the US

25052019

Woke up for a food tour. Laura and I ate the yogurt we purchased at 7-11 to amoe sure we weren't too hungry for the tour. The yogurt was a little chunky, and Laura used her superior detective.akills to read the English on the yogurt packaging, learning there were ancient grains mixed into the yogurt.

Anyways we took the metro two stops up to the Östermalms foodhall.

https://www.ostermalmshallen.se/mobil/

Our guide, and the 11 other participants all met up outside. The guide was very knowledgeable and wrangles the group well. This particular foodhall started in the 19th century. At some point in the 1800s the various vendors started struggling, to the point that the Stockholm city government had to take over the hall to make sure there would be local availability of food stuff. After several years of bad business under city ownership, the city instituted new laws forbidding the sale of food stuff in the street, effectively requiring them to move into the foodhalls, of which the city now owned the largest one.

We started with cheese, as pictures above. I don't remember what all the heeses were named, they were all cow cheese, two of them reminded me of milder parmeseans, one of them was interesting with pepper and cumin mixed in. We moved on to meat; slices of Cold smoked reindeer, took 3 weeks to smoke, warm smoked elk, which was like 8 hour smoke, and then a course ground reindeer salami, and a small beer. All of the smoked meats were good, the salami was my favorite. Apparently almost all of these meats that are consumed in Sweden are wild, they don't have reindeer farms.

From here we walked to another foodhall, this one in the basement of a mall, very much like our Asia explorations. This was the fish stop.

Here we had a seafood soup, which was a little spicy, the dish has been modernised with a sriracha aioli. The white mass there is a shrimp sandwich (sandwiches here are open face, stuff piled onto a slice of {usually rye} bread). This was ok, the shrimp was very subtle, the Mayo and whatever else was in there overpowered the shrimps. The last think there was fried herring with a Dill sour cream dollop. This was pretty tasty, I guess I've never had herring that wasn't pickled, so it had a slight fishiness balanced by the sauce, rather than the slimey vinegar of previous herring experiences.

Upstairs we had a tasting of licorice candies. Licorice is really big here, it's by far they're favorite candy.

We got a plain licorice, a smoked licorice, a sweet licorice and a candy coated (seabuck thorn) licorice. Personally I liked the plain, the most, then the candy coated, then the smoked and finally the sweet. Which isn't surprising, and I love Absinthe, which is primarily anise, which tastes similar to, though is not related to, licorice. The store claimed to have over 700 different kinds of licorice, including a whole slew of different candy coatings.

More walking and talking our way through city center to get to the chocolate shop.

https://www.chokladfabriken.se/en

Being that it is summer, we started with a chocolate sorbet. I've never had a non-fruity sorbet. It was very rich dark chocolate, here was no cream to cut the flavor, just straight frozen chocolate.

Then came a raspberry chocolate square, and a salted caramel dark chocolate with licorice shavings square. The length of the description corresponds to the flavor of each. The former wasn't that exciting, definitely quality chocolate, but not novel
The latter was very good. My father leans towards very dark chocolates, and he was blown away. He was as excited about this bite of chocolate as I was for the dumplings yesterday.

Our tour then ended with a fika in our neighborhood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_culture#Sweden

We had chocolate cake, and a carrot cake (with a cream cheese frosting). These cakes were good. We weren't explicitly here for the cake and coffee, we were here to have a fika.

Which if you haven't read the wiki, is basically a light meal where you.get together to have a coffee and catch up. It's less than a date, less than a sit down meal, but more than getting a coffee. It's a neat concept, but the group we were in was too big to sit together, so we only had one novel person at our table beyond my family. The lady worked for Google in Dublin, small world that we leave Seattle and still find tech employees.

With the tour done, we went to the swedish medieval museum. It was one of the better museums I have been too.

The walkthrough ran from the 1200s to the late 1600s. Which makes sense because that is the medieval period. The first written mention of Stockholm was in the 1250s.

That is actually said reference.

The museum took visitors through the life of the people of Stockholm, from the baker to the Noble. They had neat displays and vignettes of what things looked like, for my readers in Milwaukee it was very much like the Streets of Old Milwaukee at the Public Museum, but from 400 years earlier. Everything was in Swedish and English, they had some multimedia displays, and a special section with historical re-enactors that go out a live like their in medieval Stockholm for a week at a time.

https://medeltidsmuseet.stockholm.se/in-english/

Well worth a 2 hour wander, and it was free.


Staying on Gamla Stan we found another bar that had a Warren of basements to drink in. We had a few beers and headed out on a long stroll to get to our proposed dinner spot.

http://nytorget6.se/

This place was a little over a mile away, aonit took us out the the tourist center and into a hipster neighborhood.

We came to a park to have a sit, and just like hipster neighborhoods in Chicago and Seattle, it was slammed with families enjoying the first weekends of summer. The people watching was pleasant, other than the slightly higher proportion of blondes, it was just like Cal Anderson or Wicker Park.

We elected to stop for a quick bite and a drink before going to dinner. There was a neat deli accross from the park.

https://www.urbandeli.org/

We got beers, oysters (from Normandy) and a change board. I can't tell you exactly what was on the board, because our waiter didn't know, because the deli guys just sliced up meats and cheeses higgledy-piggledy. We had a prosciutto, peppered salami, a capocola, a salami, and small sausage bites that had been rolled in spices. There was two soft cheeses, two hard cheeses, and a blue cheese, all were good, pretty mild cheeses. For spreads there was an apple jam, an artichoke/garlic tapenade, and a plate of olives, pickled pepperoncini and cucumber.

There was quite a bit of food here, which turned out to be great. Because the restaurant we planned to hit for dinner had no space till 2145 *the next night*.

Still full of meat and cheese, we walked home, and Laura and I looked for a place to check out on the evening.

We settled on a place that sounded beat, and had been recommended by our food guide, Trägården.

It was about a mile and a half from our apartment, so easily walkable, and just long enough to help sober up on the return journey.

http://www.tradgarden.com/

It started drizzling on the walk, but not enough to discourage us. The venue was up the street and easy to find on the map, it was a little harder to find in person. It is actually under a big bridge. Fortunetely other people were going there, so we made our way down some stairs and under the bridge, around the badminton stadiums and boom there we were.

There were a few food trucks outside, and unfortunately a line to get in. We were looking to get in before 2300 as that's when they start to charge a cover.

The line moved quick, and we got to security around 2250...and then we paid 3900 SEK to get it...

And it was totally worth it. Upon clearing security we surveyed the whole place. It took us about 25 minutes to hurry through all the rooms. It was basically 5 different venues. The main stage was outside but covered by the bridge, there the DJ played mainstream house-y music, most people were here. The music was loud enough to enjoy, but the open air space meant you could move a little bit further away and have conversations. The next venue was a deep industrial/house music, the kind with disorientingly repetitive music, stomach churning bass, and accompanying flashing lights. Then up some stairs and around some corners and you have a Top 40 type club, the kinda stuff you would hear at any bar/club. And through some more poorly lit doorways and past drunk kids you find another outdoor space. We didn't spend much time here because it was semi enclosed but smoking was allowed, so we avoided it, the first walk through they were playing country, and the second walk through they were playing some swedish music. And the final bar, that we only found after seeing from the outside, was playing Indie music in a more chill atmosphere.

The place was super cool. There were probably 10 different bars secreted aroind the place. They had chill out areas, a pizza oven (with pricey pizza), a burger spot (that sold you a burger *and* a beer) and an NES hooked up to a projector throwing Mario kart up on one of the bridge stanchions. I bet the place could support 2500 people.

The city/national government puts personnel into these venues, and in the bar/club neighborhoods to keep people from getting out of line. They weren't cops, they didn't have guns, or batons, or even handcuffs. But they are around, being vigilant, and calling people down or escorting them out of the venue if necessary.

It felt very comfortable. Despite the pricey door charge drinks were cheap, we were buying draft beer for <$6.

The place was generally young, but there were all kinds of people present, including people our age and older. Again, other than the larger proportion of blondes, it was very much like an event at home.

We hung out for a few hours, drank a few beers, people watched and danced. It was a great time. After about a half beer too many, we decided the walk home, and inevitable drunk food we would find would cure an upset tummy.

Bout half way home we found a kebab spot. I got a felafel wrap, and Laura lamb/beef shwarma wrap. It was exactly what we needed.

Upon getting home, we watched a little more TV (I ate some of the chips we purchased in the Netherlands), pulled the fold out couch mattress to put on the floor (the fold out was terrible). And promptly passed out.