Around the World in 80 Restaurants — Norway
Norway is probably one of the countries that I’ve been most excited to cover for this series. This is mostly because I spent a year studying there between 2022 and 2023, and have some incredibly fond memories of my time there. I played volleyball on the beaches of Kristiansand, hiked in the absurdly beautiful Lofoten Islands, and solo-travelled by train, boat and bus from Bodø in the arctic circle all the way down to Oslo. Norway is an absolutely stunning country, and every time I’ve returned since, it hasn’t disappointed. But it’s not just the gorgeous scenery and affordable mountain huts that keep me coming back, there is also brunost.
Brunost (which literally translates to brown cheese) is definitely an acquired taste. But much like the first season of Peep Show, if you stick with it through the initial discomfort, you’ll be completely hooked. It’s unlike anything you’ll ever eat, with a strong flavour of caramel which feels like it’s competing for dominance in your mouth with the sharp, slightly salty flavour that you normally expect from a hard cheese. Brunost was first created in the 1860s, by a farm-worker named Anne Hov (no relation to the rapper Jay-Z). The story goes that having run out of goat’s milk to make cheese, she added cream into the whey instead. This produced a sweet, caramelly cheese, which she later perfected on her own farm later in life. As a result of her creation, in 1933 Anne received the Norwegian King’s Medal of Honour for her creation. Personally, I’d have made her queen.
My introduction to brunost was at the waffle hour that my university in Norway organised for its Erasmus students every week. Unsurprisingly, lectures during waffle hour had a lower turnout than early screenings of Morbius. Waffle hour was one of the highlights of the week, along with the relatively recent Norwegian tradition of “Taco Friday” (which loses points on the alliteration front). Generally, my friends and I would gather in the canteen on a Friday morning, invariably nursing a crushing hangover, to discuss the events of the previous night over ludicrously overfilled burritos. There were a number of toppings available at the waffle hour, and my first few servings were all topped with Nutella. However, the Norwegians who attended were persistent in trying to convince us that brunost and jam was the way to go. My first thought was that cheese and jam sounds like a waffle topping that is the preserve of stoners, but, inexplicably, it worked.
At least from my perspective, brunost is having a bit of a moment in the sun right now. It’s begun to fill up the explore page on my Instagram, and people have begun to recognise its uniqueness and untapped potential to be used in a multitude of dishes, both sweet and savoury. Someone who shares this obsession is my Dad, who was very excited to find it being sold at, strangely, his local garden centre, and used it to recreate a brunost ice cream that he’d tried in Bergen. Like any addict, those hooked on brunost will travel far and wide for their fix, and my search led me to Cardiff.
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“Why on earth is there a Norwegian Church on Cardiff Bay?”. This was my first question when looking for somewhere serving Norwegian food near Bristol. Their website explains that in the 1860s, the same decade that brunost was created, Norwegian ships would often bring timber to South Wales, and leave with coal to export globally. The Church was built as a place for Norwegian sailors to worship and socialise whilst on dry land, and there were also equivalents built in Swansea, Barry and Newport. My other question was: “Can I get some brunost on my waffles?”. The answer, to my delight, was a yes.
Norsk Cafe actually doesn’t serve many Norwegian dishes, with the only other one being a traditional beef and vegetable stew called Lapskaus (which is, interestingly, where we get the term scouse from). I wasn’t too distraught at this fact, as maybe both nations are better off if lutefisk and Grandiosa pizza stay on the other side of the North Sea. My friend Oscar and I arrived with only about 20 minutes until the cafe closed, and were completely sodden. Maybe they took pity on us, looking like two lost Nordic mariners, as they were still happy to serve us.
When the plate arrived, my first instinct was that for the £6.50 paid, the waffle was about half the size I was expecting, and the jam was also only spread onto one side. It was, at least, made up of the interlocking heart-shapes which are traditional to Norwegian waffles. Most importantly though, there was a generous helping of brunost. The flavour of the cheese coupled with the tartness and acidity of the jam went straight to my dopamine receptors. It brought back so many memories of my time there, much of it accompanied in one way or another by brunost. Whether it was at the Erasmus waffle hour, or at the Vaffelbua Jegersberg, a cafe deep in the woods behind my old flat, or just stealing loads of the complimentary packets that they used to leave in the gym.
In a way, my experience at Norsk Cafe helps me to understand how important some of the places I’ll be visiting in this series are to their communities. Yes, the food might not be exactly as you remember it, but it still reminds people of the memories and home comforts that they’re missing in a new and unfamiliar country. It’s certainly the closest I’ll ever get to that scene in Ratatouille where the food critic gets transported back to his childhood, except in this version he’s transported to his early 20s, and is eating waffles paid for by the European Union.
