Munch's Hus

The past 10 days or so have been exceedingly chaotic and stressful, I've pretty much just been using the apartment as a place to sleep, change clothes, get a cup of coffee and go on to the next thing. So when the person we had invited to dinner this evening begged off at short notice, we decided to have a nice dinner on the town.

WiseMan had been to Munch's Hus before, as they do the catering at the Nordic Embassies. We made a reservation for early evening - and were glad we did. When we arrived they were busy on the phone, telling people that all the tables were taken but they could come have a drink at the bar if they liked. When I made the reservation and gave our name, the guy asked "Is this Famous-Person-with-the-same-last-name?" Uh, no. And if you want to have people like that in your restaurant, you need to be very discreet and pretend they are just normal people - but treat all guests like royalty.

We started off with "Elk Blood", a wonderful aperitif of vodka and blueberry juice. I'm addicted to anything blueberry, so that was a great way to get started. WiseMan chose the porcino soup and I had a lovely salad with crayfish tails and a wonderful cured salmon steeped in aquavit.

The main dish was of course fish, I had a spit with salmon, a delicious white fish, scallops and Greenland shrimp, on top of delicate pea pods with some rosemary potatoes on the side. We had white wine with the fish, just an open wine, good for washing it down.

For dessert I had a pancake with - you guessed it - blueberry sauce. I wanted to wash it down with a Linie aquavit, but the aquavit and the espresso came quite a long time before the dessert, and both needed immediate attention.

It was a delicious evening, even if it was rather crowded. If they manage to serve the dessert together with the coffee that would have been just the crowning touch on a lovely Norwegian meal in the middle of a Schöneberg wasteland.