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KEBAB

Would you eat this Swedish hybrid saffron bun kebab this Christmas?

In Sweden, almost every festival has a traditional food to go with it, and for Lucia Day in mid-December, that food is the saffron bun. But one Swedish baker put a twist on the dish, creating a hybrid Lucia kebab, with the meat encased in a saffron pastry.

Published: 14 December 2017 16:33 CET
Would you eat this Swedish hybrid saffron bun kebab this Christmas?
The Lucia kebab. Photo: Private

“It tasted really good, actually!” Metin Kizil, owner of the fast food restaurant in central Sweden, told The Local.

The idea came about when a customer asked if he could get a Lucia hot dog in the restaurant. That twist on the traditional Lucia pastry was launched in December by Swedish newsagent Pressbyrån, with a sausage served in a saffron bun and topped optionally with ketchup and mustard.

The company's fast food product manager Fredrik Edin said: “Because the Lucia bun has a very sweet brioche-like taste, it goes very well with sausages.”


Photo: Private

But since Kizil's restaurant didn't serve hot dogs, he instead decided to improvise – and offered the customer a Lucia kebab.

“We served it to him, and he then came back and asked for another because he liked it so much!” the chef explained. “I thought 'OK, I need to taste this myself. It's good, you can put sauce on it so it doesn't taste so sweet, and it tasted really good, actually! I was surprised.”

READ ALSO: How to make (traditional) Swedish saffron buns

Then he shared the new hybrid food on the restaurant's Facebook side, and since then, they have sold seven of the saffron kebabs, and plan to continue offering the item each December. So far, Kizil says the reaction has been positive.

Photo: Private

Though Lucia Day was celebrated on December 13th, Kizil said customers will still be able to buy the treat at Kroppkärrs pizzeria in Karlstad over the coming days if they wish.

It's not the first time Kizil has cooked up an unusual foodie creation. In 2015, he created a special holiday pizza in the style of a Swedish Christmas smörgåsbord ('julbord'), with toppings including meatballs, herrings, and ham.

But perhaps it's unsurprising that a Christmas dinner pizza would go down well in Sweden, a country with a reputation for putting bizarre toppings on the Italian delicacy, and where the most beloved pizza is one covered with kebab meat and sauce. You can even get a Viking kebab pizza, which is a kebab pizza folded before baking to resemble a Viking ship.

READ ALSO: Baker makes Swedish Lucia buns using her own breast milk

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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