Solvang Restaurant: Aebleskiver and Sausage Plate
Deep in southern California, nestled between the Santa Ynez mountains and Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, there is a little town named Solvang. Somehow it splits the difference.
In the early days, Solvang was mostly Danish immigrants. Crown Prince Frederick himself visited to celebrate their preservation of Danish traditions. Today less than one in ten residents are of Danish descent, but the town itself has become a year-round theme park of Danish-inspired Christmas cheer. Pastry shops fill the air with sweet holiday scents.
Not much of Solvang is authentically Danish, but just because something is fake doesn't mean it isn't good. Though there is an entire store dedicated to "As Seen On TV" gadgets and novelties, there are others that stock high-quality European knives, leathers, and furs. The combination, at least, is unique. While tourists come year round, Christmas is the peak season. The streets flood with visitors from all over the world, all here to eat an aebleskiver and take a photo by the tree.
My friends and I are lost in the throng. Every single restaurant has a line out the door. We settle on Solvang Restaurant, the least hip spot still trading on its Danishness. After an hour and a half of waiting, we are finally seated.
We get a comfortable booth near the front. The wall is adorned with a painted illustration: the ugly duckling, small and dark, cries in the corner while white-feathered ducks waddle nearby without a care in the world. The joists overhead are painted with Danish slogans, big white letters in an old style font. Carved wood ornamentation decorates the edges of the booths as well as the molding on the walls.
All this is convincingly twee, but the restaurant feels far more diner than it does Danish. We can still see the sun through the front door, but the deeper into the restaurant you go, the more time dilates. Under these artificial lights, it could easily be dawn or midnight. A mirror on the back wall doubles the 100-foot depth, reflecting a staggering array of tables laden with plates of meat and potatoes. Over at the kitchen, a tireless line cook slings cheap eggs over the pass. A server takes the plate to an old man with a veteran's cap seated behind the counter. He's already several refills deep into his bottomless cup of joe.
Seeing this, the menu worries me. Are these potatoes the exact same potatoes I'd get at a Luby's, or is there something recognizably Danish about them? We order the most foreign-seeming food available and hope for the best.
The meal kicks off with aebleskiver. A hefty, eggy dough, fried up in a round mold, served with raspberry jam and powdered sugar. To call it balanced is a stretch, but it all tastes amazing. We immediately order a second round.
Soon after, a heap of plates arrives, and we tuck in. I begin with the salad. It is the same garden salad found everywhere in America: Sysco Salad Mix 6664346, an 80/20 blend of iceberg and romaine with shredded carrot and purple cabbage tossed in for color. I drape it with globs of Italian Thousand Island. The chill biting tang of the dressing gives body to the flavorless crunchy bulk. It cleanses our palates of all traces of aebleskiver, preparing us for the heavy meal to follow.
Next is my entree. A promising-looking sausage occupies a third of the plate’s perimeter. Next to it are limp-looking steamed vegetables, red cabbage sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes and gravy.
I work my way through the vegetables first. They taste like Sysco's Vegetable Blend Spring 3533585, the chef cut variant, sliced in generous thicknesses to suggest on-site preparation, shipped frozen and steamed to serve. They are unsalted, though I detect a hint of butter. Sad as they may taste, the fibrous structure at least provides something to chew.
Next are the mashed potatoes, a starchy scoop with pleasant stiffness. This kind of texture cannot be attained from powdered mash. It must be the real thing, like Sysco's Classic Refrigerated Creamy Deluxe Mashed Potatoes Made With Peeled Russet Potatoes 7111835, shipped in 4/6 Lb Bags. I hold out hope that the line cooks do something more than scoop it into the microwave. The gravy atop is lethargic and slow, a thick and humorless concoction. All it does is lubricate.
Finally, the main event. I cut into a fine specimen of Christmas Medister, a pork sausage rife with warming spices. It is a smokey color flecked with green. The taste is unique. Its herbs and spices complement the meat, a deserving star, fragrant and fatty. This sausage wasn’t made here, but it was surely made nearby.
Even with all its spices, the sausage alone cannot rescue the meal from soporific plainness. Crunchy sauerkraut comes to its aid, a bright pop of vinegar that cuts through starch and fat alike with buzzsaw acidity.
This was all pleasant and unsurprising, perfectly on brand. What came next, though, opened my eyes.
I have never been fond of herring. Its salty flavor, its oddly thick texture, and especially its fishy aftertaste have no place at my table. But in a vaguely Danish diner, surrounded by brown gravy and potatoes, I shared a cup of creamed herring, and it was beautiful. With a bland sea of comfort food to swim in, the fishy flavor adds welcome depth without overwhelming. The cream and acid play against each other, lifting the fish to the shallows. Served on a thin and crumbly slice of dark rye, it has the austere clarity of a chilly fjord, light and liberating.
The herring is served with a plastic ramekin of mustard so sweet and mild it feels like a different condiment entirely. There is hardly a trace of the seed that birthed it.
Just like this town.
We are done. Still riding high on herring, I venture into the back to use the bathroom. The moment I pass through the door, it is clear I am no longer in the theme park. Painted walls and carved wood decor give way to plastic and lamination, the unromantic bones that keep the building standing. This building will never be old enough for its age to be an asset. The only hint of Danish influence here is a hand painted light switch, an odd touch in a hallway that was never meant to be looked at.
In the front of the diner I saw raspberry jam for sale, little glass jars with neatly printed stickers and shiny metal lids. Here in the bathroom hallway, I see fifteen buckets of pre-made Raspberry Dandy, a mixture of corn syrup and raspberry puree. Five hundred pounds of mass-produced preserves, enough to fill a kiddie pool. A jam so sweet will stay good forever.
If I ever return, I'm getting two plates of aebleskiver to drown in it.
