Julebord 2011: Christmas dinner with friends at Olympen

It was Jana's idea to organize a typical "julebord" (Christmas dinner) among friends. Having a julebord in a restaurant eating typical Norwegian Christmas food is super common among the Norwegians and so it is more than logical that also we should go with the tradition and have some dinner together. As this is so popular, it's not easy to get a table in the restaurants during Christmas time if one doesn't book that quite some time in advance.
Jana, however, already started working on this some months ago and had zus a table for Saturday 26th of November at "Olympen" restaurant in Grønland, in the Eastern part of Oslo.

Though getting started early with the planning of our dinner, we could only get the table as early as 5 p.m. During the Christmas time there are fixed seatings for those Christmas dinners in the restaurant and the later one at 8 p.m. was already fully booked at Olympen.

Thus, at shortly before 5 p.m. we all met up at Olympen. Until the end it was actually not sure how many we would be, but we eventually ended up being in six: Jana and her boyfriend Helder, Fisnik - friend of Helder, Germain, Audrey and I. Carla is in Italy in these days and her boyfriend Inema had to work at last and thus joined us later. Tim actually wanted to join, but unfortunately cancelled last minute.

However, we had a great evening yesterday, full of fun and especially very good typical Norwegian Christmas food.

(half-Germain, Audrey, me)

 

(Germain and Audrey)

 
The menu was also pretty pre-defined. In case one decided for the 3-courses dinner - which we all did - the starter and the dessert were already pre-set. We had to choose a maximum of three different dishes for the main course.

Starter: smoked salmon with egg-cream, roasted rye, dill and capelin roe

(Fisnik and Germain)

 

(Jana and her boyfriend Helder)

 

Main course I: Audrey and I had chosen the leg of duck with apple cooked red cabbage and sausage in gravy

Main course II: Jana, Helder and Fisnik went for the baked cod with mashed potatoes, braised butter, Brussels sprouts and horseradish

Helder pouncing on the good food :-)

Main course III: Germain had pre-ordered the very Norwegian lutefisk (lyed cod) which traditionally comes in two servings.

(Fisnik)

 Dessert: rice pudding with preserved mandarin skin, cherry sorbet and almond crocant

Filled with the good food, we went at around 8 p.m. to a bar close to the restaurant with the strange name "Oslo Mekaniske Verksted". None of us had been there before, but it turned out to be a nice place.
Since the evening already started early with a dinner in the afternoon it already seemed to be so late at night when we had a look at the time at only 11 p.m. All pretty tired and probably pretty filled with the food, we left shortly before midnight.

Thanks, Jana, for having organized this julebord! The Christmas season can now begin :-)