Summary
How do you translate Danish food to suit Americans? It doesn't have to be translated. It's Mama's kind of cooking. Heavy food with a lot of gravy. A little bit like the South here. You don't have to do much with old-fashioned Danish food. It's meat and potatoes.
How do you translate Norwegian food to suit Americans? It can't be used entirely the way it is. We certainly make certain compromises and concessions at our restaurant. Several restaurants have tried putting smorgasbords together, for example, and failed because they didn't understand the concept. When we serve Jansson's Frestelse (Jansson's Temptation), we use a slightly milder combination of herring anchovies so it doesn't have such a fishy flavor. You have to be a bit more subtle. You don't want people to wonder, "Has this fish gone bad?" So what we do is we don't stress the ingredients in this dish; we call it a gratin and serve it as a side. With the result that it is very popular.Would you recommend your first-born become a chef? I'm of the opinion that my child should do whatever he likes. But I can say one thing: being a chef is brutal 90 percent of the time. It's hard work with not necessarily good pay, the hours are unpleasant, and you lose a lot of days. It's less glamorous then you'd think. And I don't want that for my child.See the full content of this document
Extract
Scandinavian in New York
Six of New York's Scandinavian chefs photographed on Manhattan's Lower West side. Once home to an industry that has all but disappeared today, this is where the trucks arrived from the main slaughterhouses of the Midwest, usually in the middle of the night, loaded with animal carcasses to be butchered and distributed. Like the Fulton fish market, which was re-located a few years ago, property in the area has become all-too expensive, and the industrial and quasi-red light district is rapidly losing its original color to become yet another tourist's mecca, with fancy restaurants and bars on every corner.
Ari NieminenExecutive Chef, Water's E...See the full content of this document
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