Muy Hygge

Members of the Smith-Hogan-Dunn family will be pleased to know that while I missed our family’s annual Heritage Night (a post-Christmas Danish dinner and drinking binge), I did not forgo my yearly obligation to guzzle aquavit. To celebrate our final night in Buenos Aires (at least, our last night for quite awhile), Emily and I paid a visit to Olsen, a chic Scandinavian restaurant in Palermo Viejo. The food was great, and the atmosphere had a transformative effect––a complete getaway from the overwhelming bustle of B.A.

Our appetizers are pictured above––five kinds of smorrebrod and five shots of vodka. Fortunately, our waiter was kind enough to substitute two of the vodka shots for aquavit––that wonderful drink that tastes like a combination of caraway seeds and battery acid. For a main course, I had baked pork with a fruit and beer sauce accompanied by dill mashed potatoes. Emily had warm smoked trout with capers, pears, and mushrooms.

All of this was after an epic day of last-minute errand running, including finding a place to buy white gas for our camping stove. It’s safe to say we won’t be eating like this again for quite some time. -NSH