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Swedish chef creates hybrid ‘nacho semla bun’

A Swedish pastry chef has combined two culinary traditions in his latest sweet creation: a bizarre-sounding, but apparently delicious, ‘nacho semla bun’.

Published: 10 January 2018 15:58 CET
Swedish chef creates hybrid 'nacho semla bun'
The hybrid treat. Photo: Wolfgang Kleinschmidt

The hybrid cake mixes the semla bun, a seasonal speciality packed with cream and almond paste, with nachos, a meal that might not be historically Swedish but has been adopted by the Scandinavian nation, where many families sit down for a dinner of tacos every Friday night. Award-winning chef Roy Fares cooked up the delicacy at his Stockholm patisserie Mr Cake, where customers can sample the nachosemla.

“In Sweden, some people are prepared to kill anyone who touches the semla,” Fares joked. But he says customers have been “pleasantly surprised” with his innovative version, and some have told him they even prefer it to the classic recipe.

“Some people don’t want to eat the whole big bun; they just want the paste inside,” he explained to The Local. “When I have a semla, I always take the top off, and dip it in the cream and almond paste, and it’s similar to how when you eat tacos, you dip the chips in guacamole. So I thought, why not combine two traditions in one: the semla and the taco, old and new?”


Pastry chef Roy Fares. Photo: Wolfgang Kleinschmidt

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Sticklers for tradition should be reassured that the baker used the same cream and dough in the new take on the semla. This means it has a similar taste to the original but is simply made in a different way, with triangular slices of dough to dip in the filling.

The semla bun is traditionally eaten on Shrove Tuesday, offering sweet-toothed Swedes a final chance to indulge before Lent. It is also linked to the day because of a legend stating that in 1771, King Adolf Fredrik died on what in Sweden is called ‘Fat Tuesday’ after a heavy meal topped off with 14 servings of sticky semlor.

Despite this infamy, the cake is so beloved that it starts filling up bakery shelves from shortly after Christmas, which marks the start of ‘semla season’.

 

A post shared by Herr och fru Fika (@fikatipset) on Jan 6, 2018 at 9:12am PST

This Instagram user said the cake “exceeded expectations”.

Fares isn’t the first baker to create a sweet-savoury mash-up of Sweden’s favourite foods. In December, one fast food restaurant created a ‘Lucia kebab’, a hybrid meal of the saffron bun traditionally eaten on Lucia Day in mid-December and kebab meat. That meal was inspired by newsagent Pressbyrån’s Lucia hot dog, a sausage served in a saffron bun and topped optionally with ketchup and mustard.

And another take on the semla was launched last year, when a pastry chef combined the treat with the traditional marzipan prinsesstårta, creating a hybrid which provoked strong reactions from customers.
 

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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