Culinary Sweden

Like explorers planting acquisitive flags, Swedish chefs have staked out their culinary claims over the past decade. Sweden is the only country to win back-to-back International Culinary Exhibitions—the Culinary Olympics in 2000 and 2004.

Now, foodies the world over unfurl maps of Sweden, pinpointing the country’s great restaurants and leaving plenty of time, too, for fun catch-of-theday bites at a dockside diner or two.

Gothenburg is food central for darting north along the Bohuslan Coast. Armed with a Taste of West Sweden map, it is easy to eat well while ricocheting among green-velvet forests, granite boulders and salty waves.

The Taste is a consortium of 25 esteemed West Country restaurants, most using local produce and traditional methods.

Winding north up the coast to Bovallstrand, boats pull right up to Bryggcafet, a Taste member specializing in fresh fish and shellfish. Its seafood soup, a tomato-cream base, swims with clams, shrimp, white and redfish. Its crab, shrimp and mussels are plated just steps from the fish mart.

Following the coast south, the sea cuts a rivulet between the mainland and Orust Island, and this is where Emil Haeger built his fanciful summer home in 1901. Today, his great-granddaughter, Ellika Mogenfelt, runs Villa Sjotorp inn and a Taste of West Sweden restaurant. Her menus follow the seasons and local production, from Orust Island cheese to her own wild berries.

“I lived in France as a child, and a lot of my ideas are from the small auberge,” Mogenfelt said. “I wanted to have a small, good restaurant in the country.”

And, how is chic Stockholm responding to all this competition from country cousins and upstart Gothenburg? By offering posh two-star meals at Edsbacka Krog and Mathias Dahlgren Matsalen and its seven other Guide Rouge restaurants. But, the electricity in the capital’s dining circuit is hardly confined to the top tier.

In Stockholm, it is fun to devise a progressive dinner to maximize a traveler’s noshing time. Kick off with cocktails in the Icebar of the Nordic Sea Hotel, a cool gimmick where the walls, bars, tables and glasses are all carved out of crystal slabs of Torne River ice, shipped from northern Sweden. Huddle into a silver thermal cape and try an Absolut Swede—peach vodka, pineapple liqueur and blue Curacao in the national colors of blue and yellow.

Then, it’s down to water’s edge for some old-time Swedish herring or reindeer, served almost like tapas at Melanders Skeppsbron. Everything is made to be knocked back by beer or aquavit, the traditional Scandinavian firewater.

A sense of heritage seems to swirl around my dessert stop. The StadhusKallaren in the cellar of the 1923 City Hall is a faux medieval hall. Upstairs, Nobel Prize winners and Sweden’s great and good gather every Dec. 10 for the legendary Nobel Banquet—for 1,318 guests. You might not have a Nobel, but you can finish your meal as the 2009 laureates did: ginger and vanilla boiled pear, served on a chocolateglazed almond base with a dark chocolate crème, vanilla ice cream and pear marmalade. You can order from all the Nobel menus from 1901 through today.

Although Swedish hotels eschew the old chocolate-on-the-pillow turndown, I would recommend creating your own heavenly send-off with a truffle from chocolatier Martin Isaksson. He recently retired from the Olympic team to concentrate on his chocolate shop, Chokladfabriken.

“I wanted to give someone else a chance on the team,” he said as he raked chocolate for truffles.

Isaksson’s certainly a star in the culinary world. Do many of his nine million fellow Swedes recognize the Olympian among them?

“If you do some events (in public), some people recognize you,” he said modestly. “But, it’s not like I’m Magic Johnson or anything.”

Noshing your way through Sweden: For more information on Sweden: Swedish Travel & Tourism Council, 212-885-9700; visitsweden. com. For more information on Stockholm: Stockholm Visitors Board, stockholmtown.com. The city offers a Stockholm Pass for free public transportation and free and discounted admissions to museums and attractions. For more informat ion on Göteborg: goteborg.com. The Göteborg Pass, a city card with free admission to most attractions, sightseeing tours and public transportation, is available on the site.

For more of Betsa’s travels, please visit globespinners.com and britainonthecheap.com.