All The Dish. - Review - restaurant review

HITTING THE SWEDE SPOTS

Say the word Sweden to mast people and, aside from Ingmar Bergman or Pippi Long-stocking, it will most likely not prompt a long list of associations. But with a number of Swedish restaurants appearing recently in New York City, and with an interest in twentieth-century Swedish furniture quietly usurping all other obsessions among some of the world's leading tastemakers (Karl Lagerfeld is rumored to be leading the hunt for great pieces), Sweden is clearly heating up. To mark this latest twist in the zeitgeist, here's a look at some of the city's best Swedish food spots.

TJA! 301 Church Street; 212-226-8900

In the catalogue of national stereotypes Swedes would likely be featured prominently in the section titled "revelers"--a characteristic it's not hard to understand given the long months of darkness they must endure each winter. It's this spirit of glass-raising and skal-proclaiming that six-month-old Tja! aims to duplicate. It's as much a nightspot as it is a restaurant. Located in the space once occupied by Barocco, the room has been reconfigured so that the bar is the restaurant's central fixture, with only floor-to-ceiling sheers separating the diners from the drinkers. Add to this a DJ station, music that's heavy on bass and big beats, and a number of tables and love seats so low to the ground they leave one practically reclining on the floor, and you have a party-potent mix. The menu offers most dishes in small or large sizes, so you can make a full meal of it, or fill your table with a variety of cocktail-sized accompaniments. The cooking at Tja! has been described as "Scandinasian," which means that in addition to classics such as Swedish meatballs you'll also find fusions like dumplings stuffed with artichoke and potato. On the plate, this combination isn't as surprising as it sounds--what is surprising is the lackluster results. Almost without exception every meat-based dish I tried at Tja!--from meatballs to stuffed chicken to filet of beef--was dry and short on flavor. Ditto the dumplings and the blinis. The one bright spot on the menu are the seafood dishes, from a lip-smacking salad of avocado and smoked eel, to the thyme-crusted tuna--limiting, perhaps, but still good enough to take the edge off too many rounds of Aquavit.

GOOD WORLD BAR AND GRILL

3 Orchard Street; 212-925-9975

For anyone who's ever complained that New York City's current slick condition leaves no room for individuality, take a trip to the edge of Chinatown and visit what may well be one of the funkier establishments still standing here. Good World Bar and Grill, a year-old Swedish restaurant deep in the heart of the Lower East Side, is the kind of incongruous place that makes you fall in love with New York all over again--its home is a former Chinese barbershop (the original awning is still in place); its furnishings and fixtures seem to have been salvaged from local flea markets; and at the rear the owners have reclaimed a small piece of the city, transforming what once probably held a dumpster and a few trash cans into a pleasant, if intensely urban, patio. Though like Tja!, Good World is equal parts restaurant and watering hole, the operation has a fairly complete menu, much of it quite good. Here, all roads lead to the lingonberry, an ingredient that makes a prominent appearance at Good World in everything from cocktails to entrees to desserts--it's a happy addition in most instances, offering a sweet counterpoint to a rich potato pancake, and a well-needed shot of flavor to the meatballs. Stick to the items with Swedish names (Iojrom, skagen) or associations (gravlax, herring, potato pancakes) and you won't leave sorry--it's simple food, but fresh and satisfying. What's less so are the meat dishes and desserts, which on one recent occasion had spent too long in the fridge. The service can be a little loopy and the food at times uneven, but you can't help but admire what Good World is doing--New York's world is better for it.

RESTAURANT AQUAVIT

West 54th Street; 212-307-7311

While Scandinavian cooking may seem an unlikely bandwagon for New York diners to jump on, the truth is that this is the second time in recent memory that the North Sea countries have claimed a piece of the city's restaurant pie--in the late '80s, two establishments focusing on food from this region opened their doors for business, and one of them, Aquavit, is still going strong today. Buoyed in the late '90s by the arrival of a new chef--twenty-nine-year-old Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised Marcus Samuelsson--the restaurant has in recent years found a second wind. With the restaurant's soaring atrium and dramatic waterfall as his backdrop, Samuelsson is serving up the kind of cooking that leaves many critics and diners applauding. While everything I tasted--from the herring plate and the gravlax, to the seared tuna and the venison--was flavorful and lovingly prepared, a worked-over quality was equally omnipresent, ultimately making the food seem dated. Samuelsson's cooking involves intricate stackings of ingred ients, artful painting of sauces, and an irreverent combining of elements (the chilled tomato soup is accompanied by "a clam lollipop")--fun stuff, but a little shticky.