Laminated pastries are my primary vice. If they’re in any way descended from or related to their European ancestors, I’ve sought them out in every Bay Area county. But Scandinavian baked goods have never held my attention—at least the American iterations of them. The ones I’ve tried were sugar bombs often thickly coated with frosting. Scandinavian bakeries are also a hard-to-find endangered species.
After a change in ownership, Neldam’s Danish Bakery—established in 1929—on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland rebranded itself as A Taste of Denmark before closing for good in 2022. A routine online search only yields three other Scandinavian bakeries in the Bay Area: Scandia Bakery in Sonoma, Copenhagen Bakery & Cafe in Burlingame and Nichole Accettola’s Kantine in San Francisco.
Located a few blocks away from the Castro on Market Street, Accettola opened Kantine in 2018 and published her baking cookbook, Scandinavian from Scratch: A Love Letter to the Baking of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, in 2023. Until last month, I’d never been in. I’d filed it under the category of “Too Much Sugar for Me.” But with the recent publication of Accettola’s second cookbook, Scandinavian Everyday, I was drawn in by the chef’s description of the Nordic Diet which informs both her personal narrative and the recipes. She describes it as a mindset rather than as a diet: “Eat locally and seasonally, reduce food waste, and focus on plant-based meals.”
Accettola writes that cooking is “more than just preparing meals—it’s a reflection of values, of how we choose to nourish ourselves and those around us.” When I dropped by Kantine to try a bowl of the chef’s signature porridge, I briefly met her in person. But a few days before that we spoke about her new cookbook.
“I struggled a little bit with this book because I don’t want it to come across as this incredible feat,” Accettola said. “It’s a challenge for a lot of us to do that thing of being able to take a breath and step away from whatever the routine or errands and say, ‘I’m going to be more thoughtful about what I’m doing in the kitchen tonight and how I shop.’”
Scandinavian Everyday begins with a set of “Kitchen Best Practices” that segues into suggestions for how to stock a larder and an introduction to lacto-fermentation. “We need to set ourselves up for success,” Accettola said. “Just having some staples on hand where you are filling up your kitchen. Small adjustments through time will definitely create some good habits.”
To illustrate her approach to cooking within the framework of the Nordic Diet, the chef offered meatballs as an example of an old-fashioned dish she reimagined. “Not doing away with all the meat, but making meatballs as we did where 50% of the farce is made with vegetables, and it still tastes great,” she said.
If there’s a job opening for a porridge evangelist, Accettola is the ideal candidate. “Before we opened, I was doing porridge pop-ups around the city and just tweaking my recipe,” she recalled. Kantine’s savory grain porridge remains one of the cafe’s most popular dishes, and is featured on the cookbook’s cover. “We’ve tried different toppings—asparagus, squash and other roasted vegetables—but there’s a clear preference that it always stays mushroom,” she said. “It’s my favorite dish on the menu.”
Accettola lived and worked in Denmark for several years. At her last job in Copenhagen she was part of a team whose goal was to improve public meals at schools, prisons, hospitals and elderly care homes. The chef focused on porridge recipe development for preschoolers. During that process she ordered a bowl of sweet porridge at a cafe. It had a little bit of salt in it which highlighted the flavors of tart apples, bananas, diced pears, cinnamon sugar and toasted coconut.
“The whole freshness of it was probably one of the first times where I was like, ‘This is so good. We need to play with these toppings because there can be so many different variations,’” she said.
Denmark also has a porridge-making competition. When Accettola participated in it, she came in as the first runner-up. “It was wonderful to walk into this room to see that people were really focused and it was the real deal,” she said. “They were very serious about, ‘Let’s bring porridge to the people.’”
Kantine, 1906 Market St., San Francisco. Open Tue-Fri 8am to 2pm, weekends 9am to 3pm. kantinesf.com
