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In every country and culture we have traditional food and cooking, something that is ours, something that when other people from different culture’s come to our land, they are told that this is ours you have got to try it. Now that is pride, pride in your nation, pride in your province pride in your town, or maybe just pride in your mom’s cooking, whatever you call it, it is a great thing to have.
Now I am from Norway and America, in Norway we do not have the same idea about “food pride” like you see around the world, when you travel to Spain or italy you see the food from their region, food that they where given by their parents, food they then make in their restaurants, that is what they have been doing for generations, and that is tradition.
If you travel to Norway on the other hand, you will see something completely different.
When you go out to eat here you will see almost no “Norwegian” restaurant’s, you will see Italian, Spanish, Asian or American, ( and most of these very poorly done in my opinion), now I would rather go out and eat “Norwegian” food that is typical of Norway that I know, then eat some half assed Italian or Asian food.
The dominating style however is French, That is also the only one that works well in my opinion.
Norwegian restaurants make French food in their own Norwegian way, and mostly it works.
But why is it that we do not have many Norwegian restaurants?
Now some might say that Norwegian food is not good, end of story, but I have a different theory.
Norwegians are a people that only want to get full, the taste almost always comes second, sure you could call that instinct, but as a chef I call it disgusting, and in the end thinking like that will only hurt the tradition and love in cooking.
Every year the Norwegian tradition cooking goes a little more away, chefs take the tradition and make it their own, because for chefs making something that other people have made before is boring, but it is there you lose the core and heart of all cooking.
Now we have restaurants that serve Norwegian dishes, that are great, but there were more places like that before.
I just hope that in 200 years traditional Norwegian food won’t be frozen pizza.