Norway
Well I did a little searching for some new countries to take the culinary-passport to and while I didn’t find a restaurant dedicated to Norwegian cuisine I did find one that had a Norse theme and a Norwegian burger so that was the stop this week. The Valhalla Pub & Eatery is in uptown Charlotte on South Church street at the mouth of a cool little alley with several restaurants shops. I was in the same neighborhood almost exactly a year ago so you can find that post if you’re interested.
Since I know from my Norse mythology you don’t just roll in to Valhalla and I couldn’t find any Valkyries to take me I settled on a Lynx.
It was nice parking at the end of the light rail line and riding uptown. I experienced no frustration, didn’t cuss at anyone, and didn’t have to find or pay for parking when I got there. Yay transit system!
The Valhalla lives up to its name and is a nice little pub. It wasn’t crowded when I got there but it started to get a little more lively as the football crowd started arriving to watch some match. What? There’s no football being played now you say. True. This was the other football, the one with the totally round ball. Some of those fans were odd but there was no face or body paint (visible). One guy brought his ball like he thought a pick up game might happen or maybe it was his lucky ball, I don’t know. Anyway I got out just before the match started so I won.
Back to the food and drink. I went for the previously mentioned Norwegian burger and a local brew, Black Blaze Chocolate Milk Stout, to wash it down with.
The Norwegian burger is not your normal round burger but an oblong mix of beef and pork on a nice soft roll. It came with Jarlsberg cheese, a smattering of red onion, something called Norsk sauce and fried egg topping it off. That egg was over easy and runny so it added a little moisture to mix. It was good and I liked that they were very spare with the red onion. You got a taste but they didn’t overwhelm the meat and cheese. The other item I considered was the Norwegian meatballs but since I did meatballs for Sweden that felt like it would have been redundant.
The Chocolate Milk Stout was really smooth and as you can see from the photo quite dark like a good stout should be.
I did appreciate the sentiment expressed by the chalkboard hanging on the wall. And this isn’t something you hear everyday but the bathroom was kind of cool too. No pictures were taken in there because I do have limits. Standards no, limits yes.
Overall I enjoyed the outing to Valhalla and honestly I can see doing it again.
For some more authentic examples of Norwegian culture check out the Tell Me More page.