Around Swedish America in 
Day 230 - White Slab Palace
Swedish restaurants come and go in Manhattan, but there is a new one that will likely remain for some time. Photographer and entrepreneur Annika Sundvik ran the very popular Good World Bar in Chinatown for ten years. Now the area is going through construction so she has opened White Slab Palace at 77 Delaney Street where you will find Toast Skagen, Janssons Temptation and Västerbotten Saganaki. Not to speak of aquavit shots.
Good World Bar was situated in an area where there were not many other restaurants, so finding the place was a challenge in itself. However, even without any advertising, the restaurant, that was open between 6pm and 4am, had a booming “word of mouth” clientele. With 75 different brands of beer and about twenty “tapas-sized” dishes on the menu, there was something for every taste. Much of the food had an “exotic” Swedish slant that food reviewers have loved. Here you could order gravlax, boiled cod, herring, and shrimps in their shells just like in Sweden. Annika did all the cooking initially but eventually found good help and supervised a staff of 10 mostly on weekends.
Now people remember the red awning outside the restaurant with the name and plenty of Chinese characters. It was a memento from the time when this soon mythological restaurant used to be the Good World Hairdressing Salon. Now the buzz is whether Annika can create restaurant history again with the White Slab Palace.