Kagges: restaurant review and a big reason for travel

On our last night in Stockholm, we went to Kagges, a year-old restaurant in Gamla Stan. It opened in 2017 and was recently awarded a Bib Gourmand, a well-regarded honor also bestowed by Michelin. One of my New Orleans cousins had suggested we go; coming from a serious eater like he is, I'd immediately made a reservation and am so glad I did.

As soon as we walked into the tiny spot, with seven seats at the bar directly in front of the kitchen and perhaps ten other tables, we felt relaxed and at home. Given the choice, you won’t be surprised to know that we chose to sit at the bar. Tom ordered an IPA crafted by a brewery in Stockholm, and I started with a glass of cold Albariño recommended by the hostess/sommelier. We were brought the most sublime bread -Tjockbulla, made primarily of mashed potatoes; it hails from the chef’s small town- and smoked butter. I could have eaten 97 of the magnificent rounds. And we also got a darling amuse bouche- tender potato rounds with some ridiculous roe mousse and nasturtium leaves. Divine.

We decided to each order the Kagges choice, the four best dishes of the day, and were not disappointed!

Smoked and lightly charred cabbage with a Swedish creme fraiche (from one farm 100 km away; this was the airiest, creamiest, velvety'est creme ever and one of the chefs told me the taste changes with the seasons as the cows eat more or less grass! How cool is that?!) and lots (!) of roe and brown butter.

A tomato salad with two forms of the same Swedish cheese (one fresh, one aged) and lots of fresh herbs.

Cured mackerel with some sort of incredible potato cream that had been put into a whipped cream dispenser and frothed out plus salad.

And guinea fowl with bone-broth gravy (OMG!) and more salad, this one with a shallot-lemon vinaigrette to die for. "An hour on the shallots and then lemon zest and juice. Then butter, not oil" I was told.

At this point, I was extremely tipsy in the happiest, friendliest way and had been chatting with the three chefs extensively about all their methods and recipes and hometowns and such. I mentioned to one that the bone gravy was so good I could lick my plate. He reached over to the utensil rack and handed me a spatula. Is that not marvelous?

That right there tells you everything you need to know about Kagges. It wasn't as perfect as Ekstedt in terms of the food (although I have no complaints), but it managed to be seriously delicious and dedicated while not taking itself too seriously. I asked the chef who gave me the spatula while telling me about his hometown and managing several stations including a salamander how he seemed so unfettered and calm. "It's all about being from the forest," he said, and for some reason that made absolute sense to me. He said Stockholmers were busier and could be intense (meanwhile, this American from DC felt like the whole of Scandinavia was on some sort of relaxing agent, bless them!) but that being from the forest made him totally tranquil.

Meanwhile, the couple at the other end of the bar from us ^^ seemed to be enjoying their meal as much as we were and had also provided helpful translation regarding degree of bitterness in a "bitter beer" Tom was considering earlier in the meal. It make me feel happy to see everyone in Kagges so satisfied.

I asked Kalle, the main chef/one of the owners if I could take his and his team's picture (there are only five of them total and one had the night off), and they said "Sure, come back here with us."

Kalle, the guy from the forest, another forester and the one who told me about the shallot/lemon/butter vinaigrette, happy Em, and the hostess/sommelier. Is this not a fantastically fun photo?

As I headed back around the bar, I got to talking with that couple. It both helps and is enormously humbling that most everyone in Europe can speak English so well, and next thing I know they've asked if we want to go out for an after-dinner drink with them. Despite our having a 5:45am wake-up call and the man needing to work the next day, we said heck yes! So, Tom, Helen, Per, and I settle our checks and wander through the not-dark-but-late night to a bar with outdoor tables where we got beers (wholly unnecessary for me but really, you only live once). I swear I think we were outside the restaurant before we properly introduced ourselves. 

They are the most delightful people, and Helen and I are already planning to mail each other seeds from our garden. We talked about politics in our respective countries and travel and welcoming people into our lives, and after Tom and I bid them farewell and began walking home, I thought once again about how food draws people together and gives us opportunities to meet and connect with others in ways we wouldn't otherwise have. 

The world is so big, and it is an enormous gift to get to visit parts of it, to meet folks from places I'd never heard of until I met them, to swap recipes and stories, to learn about their families and travels and education and interests. Thank you, Helen and Per, for the generosity of your time and company.

At the airport, Tom noticed that my passport was the thick one, the one with extra pages. He chuckled, and I said I ordered those because of hope and adventure. Although we didn't fall deeply in love with any place on this recent trip, we are bigger and better for having gone and experienced a different way of so many things. America is falling the fuck apart right now. It's wrenching and horrid, but the world is big and full of wonderful people, and I find some peace in that. 

Our gold medal find at Port 33 Vintage

As I mentioned, one of the reasons Tom and I included Denmark on this trip was to explore more deeply my mad love of Danish design. It is so clean and well designed and well made and beautifully proportioned. It is functional but it lasts.

Mogensen (who I mentioned yesterday re: the film we saw at the Design Museum) studied under Kaare Klint, a father of Danish design who emphasized top quality and perfect craftsmanship. He also felt strongly that anything superfluous to function should be stripped away. So upholstery? Out. Mogensen then worked for FDB Møbler under Frederick Nielson. FDB's mission was to provide functional, comfortable furniture to the general population. 

Anyway, during this creative heyday, the preeminent lighting designer in Denmark was Poul Henningsen. For 42 years he designed all manner of lamp for Louis Poulsen, a renowned lighting manufacturer. Henningsen's various models are so common globally that you've probably seen them, or copies inspired by them, without even realizing it. Here are some examples...

^   PH Artichoke; PH 3½; PH 5   ^

Yesterday, on a break from eating pulled pork sandwiches and tacos, we walked to Port 33 Vintage, a market just outside of Reffen's back entrance. It is a huge warehouse full of dust and treasures and junk, the sort of place you have to spend time searching through but in which might be some gold medal discoveries.

As I meandered through vases and port glasses and broken kids' toys and seemingly infinite mid-century chairs, I spied what looked like a PH 5. Dirty, yes, but the metal screens were unbent, the spacers were all in alignment, and the colored parts were the most delightful red and blue, one of my faves. I checked the neck, and there was the label: Louis Poulsen. Model and other original markers were there too. 

I started to get the total-body feeling of thrill. Here I was. In Copenhagen, the birthplace of Poul Henningsen, to see Danish design in the flesh. And a real piece, not a remake could maybe be mine. I texted my darling cousin who is a designer. 

"Doll- it's em and I'm at a vintage market in Copenhagen where I have found this original Poulsen pendant. What do you think?"

His response was to "Snatch that up and never let go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I negotiated to 1050 Danish kroner which, even knowing that the cord needed replacing and not knowing exactly what I'd find under the accumulated dirt, I knew was a fabulous deal. 

After the renting of the bikes and going to and from Christianshavn to find an ATM and knocking on the closed market door with a beer once finally back but after watching England score the first goal, the dealer told me how to take the lamp apart should I need/want to and packed it in a filthy, ancient box. I promised I would carry it home as a personal item. He was such a dear.

On the metro home, a random Dane peered into the box and said, "Oh! A vintage PH lamp. Did you just find it?"

"Yes," I said. "I just got it at a vintage place." He asked how much, I told him, and he was all "You got a GREAT deal. Especially since it's the red one. That's the best. Usually those go for around 2000 or more kroner. You are lucky. Great find."

I felt smugly wonderful in front of Tom who thus far had largely supported this mad endeavor simply because he loves me. Which is absolutely enough, but I suspect there may have been an interior eye roll in Port 33. There are NO more eye rolls now. Darling man immediately started researching authentic replacement cords (he found a great site and ordered everything today after we saw the current PH 5 models [version 6 now] in a store today). Cooler than cool is that we are nearly certain that ours is a version 3 manufactured here in Denmark in 1988 AND this year, 2018, is the 60th anniversary of the PH 5 lamp itself!!

I am just in heaven. What a special find on a special trip! We carefully took the lamp apart, cleaned it all (unbelievable what great condition it is in), and packed it in the materials we'd brought (I always travel with both bubble and foam wrap, tissue paper, and packaging tape) plus the repurposed box from the market. I can't wait to see this beauty hanging above my reading chair in our room.

Really good reading (Karl Ove Knausgaard), kitchen update

Since I can remember, which to be fair is only since about the age of 6, I have so enjoyed having older friends. High on the list of both options and favorites included my parents' friends, and even my Nanny's. I attribute this to never quite feeling like I fit it with peers my age, finding comfort in those who'd lived a bit longer, made it through various gantlets (who else wonders about gantlet versus gauntlet? See below for a deeper-in-brief understanding.), and shrugged aside what no longer mattered or should.

Being that I am nearly 42, I cannot for the life of me recall why I started this post this way. I mean, it's all true, but where was I going with my older-friend (discussion)? And why, after nothing more than a question from Jack regarding (a fifth) dinner, have I forgotten my direction?

I attribute this both to being nearly 42 and to having been home with a sick'ish child for two days while also being in the midst of our renovation and having a 3rd grade class play to attend to. Plus trump. He's generalized anxiety at its worst. Robert Reich, who I heard speak last night, feels we have much work to do but also should feel lots of optimism. We must get back to the common good, the unwritten moral obligations we each feel for others, for those are the threads that bind. Here's hoping.

In any case, good reading. 

There is always too much good reading to ever actually complete, but, if you love being swept away in deceptively simply observation of places and people, I beseech you to make time for Karl Ove Knausgaard, a Norwegian writer who lives in a tiny town in Sweden. 

I suspect that being friends with KOK would be difficult. He seems quite the artistic dervish really. Naturally, he is ruggedly handsome, perennially windswept and tan. And he smokes. But I am besotted by his writing, by his ability to see where he is and make you feel that you, too, are there. Smelling what he smells, meeting who he meets, smoking as he smokes. 

He first came on my radar three years ago, when he published in the New York Times a masterful travelogue/essay/memoir-lite about travel through North America. He managed to traverse some epically barren places, but my god did I shortly want to go where he had gone. To see the combination tub-shower-wall that seemed it couldn't have fit through the door but also couldn't have been crafted in that room. To experience the silence and space and immense rurality of some of the places he visited. In the country that is my home, and in the one that is my immediate northern neighbor. 

That piece stuck with me, not least because I consider myself nearly hampered by my observations but here was a writer making beautiful of it. And then I read about his enormous, multi-volume autobiography, and picked up "Autumn." The Guardian loathed it, considered it twee and horrid, but honestly, I loved it. I love the way he describes a wall or a spill of blood or a church or authenticity and the way we all search for and are drawn to it. Is KOK self-indulgent and dramatic? Maybe. But is his eye impeccable and is his hand deft? Without a doubt.

And then, last Sunday, this roguish Scandinavian took us to Russia via not enough pages in the New York Times Magazine. Not having read Turgenev's “A Sportsman’s Sketches," (1852) I can, nonetheless, feel I understand that which Knausgaard remains drawn to: "modest, aimless" stories that manage to portray so much, perhaps even the whole of the story.

There is something utterly magnetic in Knausgaard's rendering of place. Something completely authentic and crucial. Something essential. The everyday. Life.

I can imagine that for some such writing is mundane. But to me it is magical. And while I in no way want this to seem aggrandizing, I wonder if the magical in the mundane is maybe what can get us back to a truer sense of the common good. 

What if we first met each other as teammates? For example, my kitchen renovation. I need a team and I have one. My team is young (30s) and old (70s). They speak English and Spanish in varying degrees of fluency, and no, that doesn't wholly map with age. They are from this country and beyond. They live in cities and they live so much farther out. They are single and they are married. Some are grandparents, some are gay. I do not know where their political affiliations rest, but I do know that all of us respect the others' talents and that each of us can and do work toward a common end. We share a bathroom and a microwave, a lunch break and many hours. I watch videos of their children's musical concerts, I see photographs of their grandbabies, and I hear the woes that teenagers and college freshman bring. I think that were something horrible to befall us here, we would keep each other safe, even if that meant risk.

That is the pattern that has been revered, never completely was, is not, but could be. It is what writers like Knausgaard are drawn to and record, it is what Reich implored us to bring back, and while I still don't totally know why I started writing about older friends, I wonder if that thread is related. What we keep and what we shed as we age and our values come together and focus.

~~~
Oh, and even though I did just find termites in our deck (FFS), our kitchen is coming along swimmingly, thank gawd. The two far left cabinets in the second picture will have glass fronts too- coming...