29 May 2018

Today I write from Sodermalm, Stockholm, where I’ve just enjoyed fika with Samuel Ivarsson at the Café Rival. He’s the manager of this beautiful café attached to the Hotel Rival, the five-star hotel owned by Benny Andersson, member of ABBA and co-composer of musicals such as Mama Mia! 

While Samuel and I are drinking coffee, we’re discussing coffee – and the meaning of ‘fika.’ Throughout my past week in Stockholm, I’ve seen dozens of signs outside of cafes beckoning me to come inside for ‘Swedish fika.’

But “to fika” is not the same thing as just “drinking coffee.” And the word “fika” cannot be translated literally into English – and several Swedes have told me that this is intentional. Fika is used as both a noun and a verb: so, one can “have fika,” or one can participate in the action of “fika” – my preferred usage in light of my own Swedish heritage.

Fika has a long history in Sweden, and I’m delighted to learn the tradition is alive and well. But while the ritual is broad enough to include many different interpretations, it is neither a ‘coffee break’, nor ‘afternoon tea.’ And it’s even institutionalized at jobs ranging from the military to teaching, often including two breaks during each work day for fika with one’s colleagues!

In Sweden, the ritual includes a hot drink (usually coffee) and something sweet. In the morning, this may include a luscious cardamom bun with its scent of cinnamon and vanilla. (Try a recipe from Del’s Cooking Twist if you want to try this at home.)

This afternoon, Samuel’s and my fika includes homemade pastries from the Café Rival bakery and Fair Trade espresso from Arvid Nordquist, one of Sweden’s classic coffee roasters.

Our espresso is brewed by expert barista Richard Nilsson, who has worked in the café for six years. Between the steady stream of customers looking for a late lunch or a drink, he joins our discussion about the definition and meaning of fika. As I describe the features of a typical “coffee break” from my past office jobs in the U.S., I can’t help but smile as Richard shakes his head disapprovingly. To have fika doesn’t mean one stands drinking coffee in an office kitchen as an extension of a work meeting, or that one stands alone outside one’s office building. Fika lingers because it means pleasurable conversation with others.

Perhaps most of all, fika is an experience – one that, as Samuel tells me, has “everything to do with the meaning of life – to enjoy, to slow down, to feel comfortable, to talk or gossip” – especially with one’s family and friends. To him, “fika means happy times.”

Certainly all the Nordic countries rank consistently at the top of ten of the happiest countries on earth, according to the annual World Happiness Report.

Could it be something as simple as having fika contributes to Swedish joy?

After my welcome to the Café Rival, my answer is a definitive Yes!

**

Tack så mycket till Sean Naughton, Rival Hotel concierge & the Stockholm Tourist. 

Greetings from Sweden – the country of my family and my heritage with a long tradition of fika! Many people ask me about how my passion for coffee began… if you’re also curious, please keep reading!
*
Growing up as an only child in Los Angeles, I often ate dinner with my parents on TV trays while we three watched Happy Days, The Dukes of Hazard, or, my favorite, MacGyver. But occasionally, we’d drive our 1972 light blue Datsun a few miles away to visit my maternal Swedish grandparents who lived in the heart of Los Angeles. They were the first of my mother’s side to be born in the USA: all four of her grandparents had immigrated from Sweden to the United States in the early 1900s, fleeing religious persecution and personal tragedies.

I never met any of my great-grandparents, but my maternal great-grandmother, Karin Erika, remains a powerful presence in my life since she was my Mother’s favorite relative and whom she named me after.

Karin Erika Soderlund

My grandparents’ favorite L.A. restaurant was called “Tic Toc” – a place now out of business that once welcomed its customers like family members.

The walls flaunted hundreds of antique cuckoo clocks that would chime, buzz, or ring. Four times every hour, all around our table, birds, bears, and dolls would jut out from their captivity. For a few moments every hour, they were no longer prisoners. They would twirl and twitter. They would speak out to tell their story—and guests would stop chattering to listen to the songs of these wooden noisemakers.

There were other sounds: a vintage toy steam train’s bells and whistle with a smoke effect rising from the engine. Several passenger cars followed with faded blue and green paints, and a red caboose. The train’s front lights flashed as it coiled on its tracks, which circled the whole restaurant. Through bridges and gates, up and down small hills like a roller coaster, the train chugged. Its path led to the middle of the restaurant, where a toy village stood, larger than a ping pong table, that was filled with wooden trees, farm animals, and villagers.

Looking back, my grandfather might be one reason “Tic Toc” stayed open as long as it did. Dinners there involved three courses and many people from my grandparents’ church.

As a young girl, going to Tic Toc was always special.  It meant that I’d get to stay up late and have dessert. It meant the chatter of adults surrounding me like a chorus of crickets. It meant that I’d be wedged for hours between my beloved parents, finding myself especially happy when I was the only child so I could finish whatever book was currently mesmerizing me.

And it meant the scent of my grandfather’s coffee.

*

Which is, Dear Reader, the beginning of my story with Coffee.

For although we dined at Tic Toc more than any other L.A. restaurant in a dozen years, I have forgotten everything I’ve ever eaten there. But as if it were yesterday, I can easily I can conjure the scent of my grandfather’s coffee!

Ordered always after dinner, his coffee arrived in a white tea cup on top of a white saucer. The waitress brought a cup filled with cubes of sugar with perfect right angles and a little silver jug of cream. He’d grin as he’d place three sugar cubes inside the cup, pour in an inch of cream, and stir it all with a tiny silver teaspoon. Then he lay a napkin on top of the cup of coffee to trap in the heat, and he’d wait.

He’d never started drinking until everyone at the table received our dessert. When my single scoop of Neapolitan arrived, he’d take off the napkin, and the scent of his coffee soared. That dark brew’s aroma mingled with the sweetness of my chocolate, vanilla, strawberry ice cream, becoming what I might now call my own Proustian “madeleine moment.”

That scent meant abundance: lingering in conversation after a delicious dinner with sweet dessert.

That scent meant safety: sitting between the two people whom I loved most in the world and who dearly loved me.

And the scent meant comfort: I could be myself, happily reading, against the soundtrack of the whirls of clocks and the whistles of trains.

Most of all, it meant family.

Never did I imagine just how much that drink would come to affect my future!