Top ten things I hate about Stockholm, IV

April 25, 2004

The fourth in an occasional series.

Ten: Predatory seating
Nine: Culinary relativism
Eight: Preëmptive planningSeven: Premature mastication.

For some time, it has been apparent to me that the media here are pushing brunch as the new cool thing for Stockholmers to do on weekends. Newspapers, city guides, television and radio have all decided that if it's good enough for the Sex and the City cast, this should be the next big cultural import from New York. But there is an element of willful obliviousness involved: Swedes invented brunch generations ago, and in fact brunch every weekday, when they take an hour off from work for food. At 11.30 am.

Stockholmers might think they are eating lunch then, but they'd be wrong. Food consumed at 11.30 am can be wonderful, but it is not lunch. Lunch is what the Italians have at 1.30 pm. It's what the Spanish have between 2 and 5 pm. That said, the Swedish weekday brunch is a lovely ritual — all the restaurants cater to it, friends meet in the old town to catch up and swap gossip, mamma-ledig ("mommy-free") mothers on their year-long leave from work cart their offspring in SUV-sized buggies to meet admiring pals, and officemates can flirt without really calling it a date. In fact, Swedish brunch fulfills all the same social functions as the New York version, with the added benefit that you get to do it during office hours.

So, to clarify, I don't hate the brunching tradition as such, but I do bemoan its misclassification as lunch, and one additional opportunity cost: The resultant temporal shift of all mealtimes. Swedes are constantly hungry ahead of the rest of Europe — their eating habits are, in fact, synchronized with those of Iraqis. Walk home from work shortly after 5 pm and you will see Stockholmers sitting at restaurant tables, ordering. The tail end of a three-martini lunch, perhaps? No, the start of middag, which they believe is dinner.

Clearly, dinner is not served at 5 pm. This is obvious to all foreigners. For example, Ayse and Cemo, who are visiting from Istanbul on a baby-goods shopping spree this weekend, were asked by Joachim, a Swede, what time they'd like to meet for dinner tonight. They said 8:30 pm. Joachim nearly gargled his café latte. He had 6 pm in mind. Because it was Saturday.

Stockholmers, stop being so defensive about your bizarre eating habits; stop trying to shoehorn your meals into accepted global norms, and celebrate your otherness! I suggest trying to export the 5 pm meal to New York as something sophisticated and maybe even a touch decadent, as in "look how early I can get off work." New York restaurants would take to it in an instant: they could always use an extra sitting. If Carrie and the girls had another season on HBO, they'd definitely be meeting for lunner, or maybe they'd call it dinch.

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