Restaurant: IKEA Restaurant
City: East Palo Alto, CA

On Friday, April 11th, IKEA restaurants worldwide held a traditional Swedish Påskbord (Easter Smörgåsbord).

I found out about this event through the IKEA Family emails, and secured tickets a few days beforehand! It was $9.99/person for IKEA Family members, which is a pretty sweet deal for a buffet!

The menu:

FIrst Course
– Assorted varieties of herring
– Hardboiled eggs with mayo and shrimp
– Hardboiled eggs with sillrom or tangkorn
– Shrimp with cocktail sauce
– Marinated salmon with mustard sauce
– Smoked salmon with horseradish sauce
– Poached salmon

Second Course
– Assorted Swedish cheeses
– Tossed green salad
– Cucumber salad
– Red beet salad
– Breads: crispbread, crisprolls, softbread, and thinbread

Third Course
– Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes or broiled potatoes with dill
– Lingonberries
– Jansson’s Temptation
– Swedish ham
– Prinskorv

Dessert
– Assorted Swedish desserts and cookies

The following is some info about smörgåsbord, from Wikipedia:

Smörgåsbord is a type of Scandinavian meal served buffet-style with multiple hot and cold dishes of various foods on a table, originating in Sweden.

The Swedish word smörgåsbord consists of the words smörgås (open-faced sandwich) and bord (table). Smörgås in turn consists of the words smör (butter, cognate with English smear) and gås (goose). Gås literally means goose, but later referred to the small pieces of butter that formed and floated to the surface of cream while it was churned. These pieces reminded the old Swedish peasants of fat geese swimming to the surface. The small butter pieces were just the right size to be placed and flattened out on bread, so smörgås came to mean buttered bread. In Sweden, the term breda smörgåsar (to butter open-faced sandwiches) has been used since at least the 16th century.

Smörgåsbord became internationally known, spelled smorgasbord, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair when it was offered at the Swedish Pavilion’s “Three Crowns Restaurant.” It is typically a celebratory meal and guests can help themselves from a range of dishes laid out for their choice. In a restaurant, the term refers to a buffet-style table laid out with many small dishes from which, for a fixed amount of money, one is allowed to choose as many as one wishes.