We arrived a little before Akvavit (pronounced “Aqua-vit”) opened for lunch, but the friendly waitress seated us anyway and served us drinks. This good start set the tone for the rest of our meal. To begin, we had three kinds of herrings—traditional, tomato and spicy. The traditional herrings were lovely and salty-sweet, while the tomato ones were a little tangy, and the spicy ones were a tad too salty. We also ordered a mixed plate of smoked salmon and marinated salmon. We liked the generous helpings of succulent salmon and the honey mustard dill dip that came with them. For mains we had roast beef remoulade with crispy onions, pickles, mayonnaise and horseradish shavings, and aebleflaesk, which is bacon fried with apple and onion. Both were absolutely delicious—the beef was tender and sliced thin, and the mayonnaise was fresh and sweet (complementing the sharpness of the horseradish and the sweet-sourness of the pickles). The crispy onions provided a nice texture. Aebleflaesk came with five rashers of bacon cooked just right, sitting on top of a heap of apple slices with not too much onion mixed in. The chewy texture and saltiness of the bacon blended nicely with the crunchiness and slight sweetness of the apple and onion. Small but (as we discovered) filling slices of dark rye bread came with everything. Although we barely had room for dessert, we went ahead and ordered strawberries with cream and a warm apple cake with sour cream. The strawberries came in a mini-tureen of cream, and were very fresh. The apple cake was moist and soft, and the sweet sponge, grated apple and chopped walnuts on top went perfectly with the dollop of sour cream. Our waitress was attentive throughout—although the fact that we didn’t see any other customer there might have worked in our favor. Akvavit’s location doesn’t command a lot of walk-in traffic right now, something which we hope won’t deter people coming here. We ordered a single serving of coffee and were pleasantly surprised when our waitress brought us a huge percolator. It was enough for three whole cups and made a nice end to what was already an excellent meal.
