Eating, drinking, and decidedly not tasting our way across the city
My goal was simple: to eat kanelbullar for breakfast in Sweden. So what if we woke up that morning in Denmark? In Europe, countries can be shockingly close together. Like, say, separated by the narrow Øresund between the island of Zealand and the mainland of Sweden.
In my opinion, a day trip from Copenhagen to Malmö was a must. Part of it was the lure of pastries, but it’s not like Denmark is slacking in the pastry category. The real draw was the opportunity to utter sentences like “we took a day trip to Sweden,” and to add another entry to the list of countries I’ve visited.
The details: you take a train across the sound! It leaves from Kobenhavn H or from the airport, every 20 minutes, and takes about 40 minutes. It’s more difficult than I expected to figure out which train is the correct one, since the endpoints aren’t Copenhagen or Malmö. I honestly can’t remember what twist of deductive reasoning and/or internet exploration got us to the right platform, because it was all before coffee and I immediately forgot it. But you can do it! We thought the train ride itself would be more impressive than it was. Only a small part of the journey is across water and the view is marred by the bridge’s support beams. And in our case, an American and a Swede were sitting right behind us, loudly having the same old conversation about how both countries are more complicated than international media makes it seem (Did you know that—gasp!—not everyone in Texas wears a cowboy hat and votes for Trump?).
Still, after meandering from Malmö Centralstationen through a few streets of shops and detouring a few blocks chasing signs for an elusive flea market we never found, we arrived at Lilla Kafferosteriet within the outer bounds of what I consider breakfast time. I had been dreaming of kanelbullar (cinnamon roll) since booking our tickets to CPH, but the platter next to them held kardemummabullar (cardamom roll), so I did the only sensible thing I could do and ordered both, a latte to go with them, and a bag to take my leftovers for later.
It was a decently nice day, so we sat in the garden. But the interior of the space was surprisingly large and cozy. Dare I call it hyggelig?
After breakfast, we wandered westward through cute little streets and squares (including Lilla torg, “Little Square,” the smaller sister to Stortorget, “The Big Square”—I do love a language that makes sense!), admiring wooden clogs and the art on display in one of the city’s oldest buildings (Galleri Gustus) on our way to Kungsparken/Slottsparken, a large and lovely green space that includes a castle, flower gardens (it was “Blomsterfest” at the time), a windmill, and multiple bodies of water filled with ducks and geese and swans.
The only tourist attraction that we decided to visit was the Disgusting Food Museum, for no other reason than that it was there. Look, I don’t make the rules. When you’re in Reykjavík you stop at the Phallalogical Museum and when you’re in Malmö you go to the Disgusting Food Museum. The DFM is silly and objectively not worth the price. The whole place smells funny, its one-way system means traffic jams behind slower readers, and many of the exhibits are more upsetting than disgusting (lots of animal cruelty).
And yet, there’s a kind of charm to the place. Your ticket to the museum is a barf bag, and a sign on the wall lists days since last vomit. The centerpiece of the museum is its tasting bar, which we noped the hell out of. You get a bingo card when you go in, and if you taste all the things, you can spin the wheel to win a prize… which is probably like a t-shirt or hat or something. All in all, the DFM is the museum equivalent of biting into something awful and offering it to a friend saying here, you try it. I can’t recommend you visit—but also I recommend you visit.
I knew I could endure almost none of the tasting bar, so I didn’t bother trying. Here’s a guide to some of the items you may be unfamiliar with: Messmör is a sweet whey cheese; Sonaris, otherwise known as Cenovis, is similar to Marmite or Vegemite; Milkis is a Korean carbonated soft drink made with milk; Mont Vully, Basajo al Passito, and Su Callu are all cheeses (the latter is aged in the stomach of a suckling goat slaughtered right after drinking milk); Hàkarl is fermented shark; Surströmming is fermented herring; The Last Dab, Da Bomb Beyond Insanity, Hellfire Doomed, Final Answer, Toxic Waste, and Grim Reaper Affliction are all bonkers-hot hot sauces.
The next panned stop of the day was at Malmö Brewing Co., to enjoy a beer or two on their patio. Is this the loveliest place to drink a beer in Malmö? It is not. But does it have the most craft beers on tap? Probably.
The loveliest spaces in town would probably have to be the streets. From April to October, the city closes or mostly closes some streets to car traffic, installing astroturf, container gardens, cafe seating, fairy lights, giant lamps, games, and more.
The park that we ate dinner in, Folkets park, is another strong contender for loveliest—or at least liveliest—spot in Malmö. “The People’s Park,” we learned from our server, has been a place for working families to come on the weekend for 130 years. It is loaded with attractions like mini golf, a splash park, and weird bouncy things for kids that I would have loved to try out. It was colorful and vibrant in a way that nothing free is in America. It also contains sports fields, a nightclub that looks a bit like a mosque, and several restaurants. We ate at Far i Hatten, a swanky pizza and pasta place that came highly recommended and did not disappoint. I had Pizza #4: Tomato sauce, thybo (cheese), baked leek, chili-honey & pickled fennel. Sounds weird but it worked, and paired nicely with a local sour beer.
It’s called Father in the Hat because it has always been the place in the park where dads lurk off to for a drink while the kids run wild (a bit sexist—what if Mor wants a beer too?—but whatever). The current iteration of the restaurant has been there a few years, but they are required to keep the name and the old iron sign at the gate.
This was only the tiniest taste of Malmö, a town I went to with few expectations. Based on one (mostly sunny!) summer’s day, it struck me as a comfortable place to live a happy Nordic lifestyle. It’s not exactly a tourist hub, daytrippers from Copenhagen notwithstanding, but has a lived-in vibe and a wealth of amenities for residents. Including a handy spot to eat your fill of bugs and insanity peppers.