Ironically, the most popular frozen pizza in Norway, Grandiosa, is considered something of a national dish. It’s also one of the worst frozen pizzas you’ll ever try, and is mainly popular only because of nostalgia.
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I don’t know what it says about me and my love for pizza, but your comment makes me want to try it even more.
I’ve tried many a bad pizza, but I’ve yet to find one inedible, and that makes me curious.
It’s definitely not inedible. It’s just incredibly bland. Like most other Norwegian cuisine, unfortunately.
I made some sort of Norwegian dish for my ex (she’s Vietnamese, comes into play later) that she really wanted and missed from when she visited Norway. It was a casserole consisting of potatoes, cream, pickled Herring, and ground black pepper. Like, I’m pretty sure that’s every ingredient that went into this thing. I’m not even sure if there was any cheese or salt.
I thought I screwed up somewhere because it was not good. She loved it because it was so bland and apparently I made it perfectly. I do not understand how she could go from eating food like bun bo hue to whatever the hell I made and enjoy it.
TBH compared to the rest of SEA Vietnamese food is often relatively mild
You dont need to euthanize the flavour of the ingredients by using a bunch of extra spices all around all the time.
Pickled herring already has a strong flavour, which with potatoes and cream will create a pretty smooth taste.
One of the most known Basque (north Spain) cuisines is cod, garlic, olive oil. That’s it! And it’s fucking delicious if done right (vacalao al pil pil if honest to search). A good steak is often seasoned with just salt.
I do enjoy heavy seasoned stuff, but sometimes enjoying the simplicity of non invasive flavours is cool too.
That’s kind of sad. Is there some Norwegian food that you would recommend? I don’t know if I’ve ever had anything specifically from there.
Brunost, brown cheese, which is something of an acquired taste. Cherry cheese. Tubed caviar, which is not the fancy gourmet dish you’d expect from the name. Offhand that’s what comes to mind about uniquely Norwegian stuff.
I’d give that brunost a go, couldn’t find anything on cherry cheese, and the tubed caviar sounds like something my girlfriend would absolutely keep on hand. I’ll have to keep an eye out for these things.
Where do you live? I understand the states have a big Norwegian community.
I’m East Coast between Philadelphia and New York. I think of the center north (Michigan/Minnesota) as where all the Scandinavians are.
I saw some things say Ikea stocked the Kelles Kaviar, but now they either don’t have it or they have some inferior house brand.
I knew a guy from Norway on a hostel in Argentina, I asked him what was their national dish and he told me that frozen pizza. I didn’t believe him and forced to give me a Real answer and he show me the Wikipedia article of some fish buried on snow for 3 months.
Hah! Lutefisk, yet another dish that exists today purely for nostalgia. It would also probably fail every food safety test in existence today if it wasn’t grandfathered in.
For those not in the know, it’s fish preserved in lye, which is an extremely toxic substance. Preparing the dish involves cooking it for long enough to fully neutralise the lye, and any failure to fully do so results in poisoning, which can range from mild to extremely serious. I also hate to imagine what byproducts might be left behind as a result of the lye.
Think he refers to rakfisk. Lutefisk is never buried. And rakfisk is fermented like kimshi, and definitely not eaten out of nostalgia. It’s videly popular in Norway.
I mean, pretzels are also made with Lye.
Full Pakke 2
Can attest. Just visited Norway and although I wanted to eat authentic Norwegian cuisine, pizza was everywhere. Easier to find than seafood and I was staying in a port city.
Nothing like freshly fished pizza, that’s what I always say.
When I was in Iceland food was so expensive that I was happy to eat at a KFC because it was my first affordable meal.
I was in Iceland a few weeks ago, and hot dogs and burgers seemed to dominate the national cuisine. I expected more fish, but fish and chips was usually the most expensive item on the menu.
No sheep ? I remember mutton being half the dishes, and fish being the rest.
But then if you go to Iceland for the food, you’re probably coming from a terrible place.
Tbh, I have been to Iceland twice and I have managed to eat very well! (Italian here)
There is no much variety, but I have eaten very good lamb (as you are saying), stews (both mean and fish), even baked goods (there was a tiny house with very good cakes in the middle of nowhere in Westfjords).
My favorite probably was a fusion sushi place (I.e. sushi with local fish) in Seydisfiordur (the town where Ben Stiller arrives to in the Walter Mitty movie BTW). I don’t think the place exists anymore (that was in 2018) but it was very good.
Sometimes you can find very good food in unexpected places (for example, I have never eaten better Mexican food than in Rovaniemi, in Finnish Lapland!).
Yes, very good lamb and seafood. I had a seafood stew that was excellent. I almost made myself sick because I stuffed myself with their herring too. I called it Viking sushi. :D
Yeah, the food isn’t bad at all, just not terribly varied. Except for their hot dogs; hot dogs with fried egg, vegan hot dogs with blue cheese, and a few dozen other variations.
Yah, it was lamb and salmon 99% of the time. Don’t knock seafood there though. I went to a nice place In Reykjavik and it was some of the best seafood I’ve had.
For real? Last time I was there the fish dishes were the only affordable option. A full fish plate at a restaurant was 20 euros while a simple burger was 35. Fish is the only thing they don’t have to import. In a local supermarket a loaf of bread was 8 euros, a six-pack of cheap beer 20 euros. And a beer at a bar was 17 euros. Like, wtf. I just ate fish the whole trip as it was the only affordable food there. While I’m normally a vegan, but vegan food would completely drain my wallet.
Small countries are very sensitive to price fluctuations on food. In Norway something might cost 40 nok one day and 20 the next (usually the other way round) especially imported things.
I live in the Netherlands, we don’t have that. Might it be because so much is imported and needs to be transported far to many rural areas in Norway?
Also, fish should be steady in Iceland as it has a steady inflow, being a local product.
The Netherlands is part of the EU, darling. Norway isn’t. Also the exchange rate isn’t as steady so if fish is local then it’ll keep the same price in Icelandic kroner but the price for a tourist will vary because you convert the price to your own currency in your head when you travel.
Norway may not be EU but Norway is Schengen, so trade wise it’s the same.
Yeah I do convert the prices in my head, but the currency does not fluctuate so much that in the morning a beer is super expensive and in the evening fish is cheap. When I was there I was there twice for 3 days. There’s no hyper inflation in Iceland so when I compare 2 products, I bought them on the same day, maybe 1 day apart and the currency should be stable enough to barely fluctuate compared to the euro during that time.
From what I remember, burgers were usually about 3500 isk, while fish and chips awas 5000 isk. I think that’s about €25 and €35. I’ve seen several restaurants with prices in that range, but I didn’t remember all the prices.
It’s insane how expensive fish is in Iceland. Yay fishing monopoly!
lol
There’s Norway that’s true
I bet we can find out whose spreading this fake news if we Sweden the pot.
I hear Sweden puts bannana, curry, and ham on pizza. I like some weird foods, but I haven’t tried that yet…
Australian accent time
Which is crazy because pizza I’m Norway is not that good
It’s important to mention that the vast majority of pizza eaten in Norway is frozen pizza. Grandiosa is the most popular brand and it costs about as much as a restaurant pizza anywhere else
Why buy a frozen pizza if I can get a restaurant one for the same price?
Snow is a thing
Some American frozen pizzas can be good, but at least in Poland/Czech Republic almost none of it is.
The gladiator frozen pizzas are the best in cz imho, but still like 5/10 in general
Can confirm. I worked at Peppes for 4 years. It’s trash.
What they call pizza here is more like frozen cardboard. No, it’s really “not that good” at all
Is it just a vehicle for eating fish with your hands though?
I worked a Fish Farm for a few months. There were two things wrong with your sentence. ;-)
As is a fish taco.
We Italians eat too much pasta to be able to top the pizza rankings!
maybe that’s why they’re so happy
#2 is my house
Can you call it pizza, though? If it has kebab, and shrimp, and banana, and peanuts, and mayonnaise is it actually a pizza, or is it simply a scattering of food on a plate that happens to be made of bread?
I’d argue that as long as the base is a Margherita (dough, pizza sauce and cheese), anything you choose to put on top of it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is a pizza.
Substitute any of the ingredients of the Margherita though, and we’re in murky waters.
Is it because they are rich and dont want to cook?
I don’t think Norwegians are rich; just happy. I think they’re secure - food security, healthcare security, general safety, no lynching of gay people - in ways that other countries (ohai America and Somalia) may think is the kind of security only afforded to the very rich.
So, in this case, the people of Norway may appear rich to people who don’t have their basic needs covered, and it may be an enviable state to be in, just to be free of the daily worry and grind for the most basic of needs, but I’m sure the average Norwegian doesn’t identify as rich, and is not in a position to understand how well they have it in comparison to other countries.
Noone identifies as rich, because as you become richer, your social circle also becomes richer. So you never really feel rich, because there are other people who are, significantly, richer than you.
If you dont worry about food, shelter and healthcare then you are rich(or at least “middle class”), ie free to do whatever the fuck you want with no risk or fear. You can have very low personal net worth but if your family(and/or society) has your back, no matter what, then you are not poor.
And since Norway has one of the highest home ownership rates, among non shitty countries, then even from a networth point of view, most norwegians probably have 500k+ € networth. Most countries with high home ownership are poor countries, where houses are cheap and shitty(people are migrating out of the country, so a lot of houses are available). Or countries like China and Singapore, where housing is a major priority for the government.
And in before “communism”, Singapore is one of the most capitalistic countries on the planet. But providing housing is a big part of their social contract and how the dictatorship has managed to maintain control over the country for over half a century with minimum opposition. And tbh, the chinese government is similar. Authoritarian but provides economic prosperity/housing in order to keep society stable. Also communist mostly in name but actually capitalistic.
A stupid combination of
lazyness, a very successfull ad campaign long ago and nostalgia.Same thing why they have taco friday (only due to texmex ads) or why they still stick to the absolutely boring bolle (rasinbreads) as main food for schoolkids.
Sorry for the rant, i just hate the food “culture” here…
Edit: ok lazyness is an unbased accusation, scratch that…
Ok WHAT. What do Italians eat then?
They’re mostly filter feeders, the constant hand movements are a dead giveaway
Pasta.
Oh, they have godly pizza over there. And gelato.
This just tells me you don’t go to Norway and expect to be outside a lot =D
who would have known that Italians prefer to eat some weird bologna thing instead
Yeah but they put like mayonnaise on their pizza and fish
My friend, I’ve had an abomination of a cheeseburger pizza (in the US) that used mayo like sauce.
And fish? You do know anchovies are an amazing (if somewhat niche, but archetypal) topping.
Heck, did you know pineapple is a common topping? oof. Of all things to put on a pizza!
Then there are those weirdly delicious mashed potato or Mac n’ cheese pizzas.
And let’s not forget the blasphemous Alfredo sauce “pizzas.” Get that as a surprise on a slice of what looked like pepperoni at the Pizza Ranch on the buffet and just try not to throw up.
I went on a first date with a girl who ordered a slice of “big Mac” cheeseburger pizza with McDonald’s secret sauce and American cheese
She wanted me to try a bite. I did. It was terrible. She loved it
No accounting for taste, I guess
Tuna pizza is the best, and Americans are so missing out on it with their bizarre narrowminded gatekeeping of pizzatoppings. Americans have like 3 things that are allowed as pizza toppings, which is so strange considering pizza should just be a vehicle for whatever goodness you want to put on it. Even the otherwise food conservative Italians have figured this out with their pizza al taglio.
No one gate keeping pizza toppings. It’s literally bread you can put anything in it. Calm down bro. We sell pizza with mustard and pickles on it in the south
Pizza a taglio is actually something almost exclusively found in and around Rome.
BTW even regular pizzas have various toppings, they just need to make sense (for example tuna and onions is a possibility).
I bet I eat more than they do.
But are you eating enough to be a country?
I’m trying!
