Philly Eats: Noord eetcafe

My hubsbind ((c) Amber 2015) and I checked out Noord for dinner last night. It's a neat little BYOB at the intersection of 11th, Tasker and Passyunk Ave in South Philly.  I've been wanting to check it out ever since I first heard about it last year, as I am an enormous fan of PBS cooking shows, in particular New Scandinavian Cooking with Tina Nordstrom and Andreas Viestad. I feel like certain cuisines - such as Italian, Chinese, Latin, and "new American" - get a lot of press, but how often do you hear people gush about Scandinavian dishes?  Even though they often combine many of the things I love about eating:

• seafood and fish
• pickles and capers
• mustard 
• beer
• cream sauces
• onions/leeks/scallions
• wild berries
• sausages

So I'm taking it upon myself to be the hype-woman for Scandinavian cuisine.

Noord was terrific. First, let me say the service was wonderful - the staff were funny, informative, and gracious. I love it when a business not only offers you something great as a customer, but when the people who own and run it are just plain likable too.

The food was unique, super fresh, and delicious. For appetizers we had the head-on prawns, which were delightful, with a broth that was to die for. The home-made grilled rye bread they were offering was so tasty with the prawn broth. The other starter we tried was a special - soft shell crabs (lucky us, perfectly in season) on a salad of arugula, watermelon, mint and feta. Everything was seasonal and delicious - of course, soft shell crabs being one of my favorite things ever. An old bay aioli drizzled over the top made it darn near perfect.

For entrees we had the Lekkerbejkes on Snert (basically Scandinavian fish and chips, with a pea mash) and the Shellfish Waterzooi which consisted of mussels, clams, and prawns with potatoes and carrots in an incredible beer cream sauce that I basically started eating with a spoon after I had inhaled all the seafood and veggies.

Dessert was an almond cake with almond custard and whipped cream, which I ate while sobbing quietly because it was too delicious (like a giant plate of creamy marzipan).  p.s. anyone wanting to poison me - get to work, as I will immediately gorge myself on anything that tastes and/or smells like almonds.

Overall grade - A-, would eat again