New Orleanians often enjoy referring to our city as not a melting pot, but a gumbo pot. Even a cursory glance at the local dining landscape will reveal an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the variety of cuisine available, owing much to the centuries-long multicultural nature of our residents. Obviously, we love our homegrown Creole and Cajun fare, but new visitors might be surprised to learn that some of our most lauded new restaurants in recent years have been Senegalese, Israeli, Indian, Thai and, of course, Vietnamese. But despite the delicious diversity of global bites available here, there are still a few regional styles that have long escaped the restaurant scene here. Among them is Scandinavian fare, of which many Louisianisans are unfamiliar, and sadly so.
Fortunately, those pining for tastes of the fjords in the Crescent City will have to wait no more. Applied Arts, the local coffee roaster founded by Baruch Rabasa and Melissa Stewart, expanded their business last year to include an ultra-cozy Bywater café, serving Scandinavian dishes to complement their extensive selection of roasts. The decision to offer that particular fare might seem a quizzical one at first, but nothing could have been more natural for Stewart, who used the opportunity to share the cuisine of her Norwegian heritage. Chef Rabasa, a fixture among fine dining restaurants for the past couple of decades, was more than eager to explore and help design a Scandinavian menu that would comfort and gratify New Orleans diners.
According to Stewart, “My grandfather fought in WWII with the Americans, because Norway was occupied by the Nazis. After the war, my grandmother came and met him in New Orleans, and they got married here at the Norwegian Seamen’s Church. So when we were thinking of concepts that would be good for breakfast and lunch, all of a sudden we thought, ‘You know what? Why not Scandinavian?’ And Scandinavia loves coffee, of course. Baruch thought that would be fun, because he’s always done French technique with Mexican influences, and this would be a fun new adventure for cooking.” Rabasa agreed. “I kind of felt like, if I was going to do cooking, I wanted to do something out of my wheelhouse, something where I was learning and invigorated and kind of excited to do not just the same thing,” he says. “It was just getting kind of boring for me at that point, and Scandinavian food is not boring.”
If you’re yet unfamiliar with Scandinavian cuisine, rest assured that it’s not all sweet meatballs, salt licorice and fermented shark. As an introduction to the cozier fare of the chilly European north, Applied Arts couldn’t have done a better job with their new café offerings, which focus heavily on smørrebrød, the traditional open-faced Norwegian sandwiches served on buttered bread and piled perilously high with a remarkable variety of toppings. “While we were going through this, my mom said, ‘You’d better make sure that it’s extremely beautiful, because the whole thing about them is they’re just these beautifully composed, towering things, which also goes really well with Baruch’s cooking style,” said Stewart. “He loves to have different textures and flavors and little plays of things.”
And that’s precisely what you’ll find when you venture to Applied Arts: gorgeously composed, very tall open faced sandwiches that manage to feel both delicate and intricately flavored as well as wholly gratifying. There is, of course, a pickled herring version with curry notes, nestled atop buttered, house-made Danish rye with charred broccoli flourettes, pearled carrots, sprouts, and “soya crunch,” which, Rabasa notes, is his combination of toasted pepitas, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and white and black sesame seeds flavored with soy sauce and honey. It’s the perfect addition of crunchy texture to a softer, more savory dish. “If we’re going to put that on the moniker that we’re Scandinavian, we had to have herring,” said Rabasa, who also noted that they could hardly keep their bona fides unless they included gravlax on the menu as well. That option incorporates beet-cured salmon with creamy dill aioli, beet tartare and sprouts on dark pumpernickel, and it’s definitely a menu standout that will likely bring you (and this writer) back for numerous revisits.
For a streamlined café menu, that could have easily sufficed and satisfied diners, but there are more options still, and none of them miss the mark. The “eggs salad” is intentionally plural, as it pairs creamy egg salad with salmon roe (“eggs,” get it?), along with quickle and frisee salad atop pan de mie. Another fan-favorite is their avocado toast with habanada hot sauce, fried shallots, pea tendrils and a poached egg on country rye, and also an umami packed smørrebrød festooned with pickled mushrooms, ricotta, shiitake “bacon,” and pickled tomatoes on traditional Norwegian mormorbread. Speaking of bread, all varieties are made freshly in house, the result of Rabasa’s eagerness to dive deeply into Scandinavian cookbooks and the sagacious wisdom of fellow chefs to perfect his recipes. The result is every bit as comforting and impressively artful as one might wish from a culture that knows exactly how important comfort fare can be in a part of the world notorious for its freezing climes. But even in a tropical locale like New Orleans, the cozy factor still works beautifully, especially in such deft culinary hands and passionate spirit as belong to Rabasa and Stewart. Pairing your indulgent tower of smørrebrød with the complex notes found in Applied Arts’ single origin coffees and creative house blends, it’s often difficult to remember that you’re snuggled up next to the Mississippi River and not, say, a sidewalk cafe in Copenhagen or Oslo. And that’s no easy feat in this town, to say the least.
Any worries that New Orleanians might not take to the Scandinavian palate quickly vanished when Applied Arts quickly found eager regulars in their Bywater neighbors. “The location is totally a dream,” said Stewart.” As a Bywater resident with dogs, I know how people go over that [Piety Street] bridge to run or walk their dogs every single morning, and we see a lot work-from-home people in the neighborhood, so they’re the ones who start showing up around 9:30am to work and get some food, and then people coming in for lunch meetings or just fun. It’s just great to see, and it’s going really well.”
About the Owners
Chef Baruch Rabasa was born in Mexico City and raised mostly in Northern California before moving east to Maryland with his family. Rabasa graduated from the Culinary Institute of America before launching into a culinary career that would bring him to some of the finest restaurant kitchens in New Orleans, including Restaurant August, Emeril’s, Le Petit Grocery, Meson 923, the Franklin, Atchafalaya and Geautreaux’s. Cultivating both beans and customers with partner Melissa Stewart, Rabasa quickly found a dedicated fanbase of coffee lovers selling beans at the Crescent City Farmer’s Market, and when the opportunity came to add a café to the mix, he leapt at the chance.
Melissa Stewart originally hails from D.C. but found her true home here in New Orleans as a Tulane undergraduate. As a visual artist, Stewart specialized in photography for years, as she trotted the globe for exhibitions, with locales ranging from Montana to Croatia. After hustling in New York and London for a number of years, Stewart needed a change of pace and decided to reinvent herself – where else – back in New Orleans. During that time, Stewart took a job at The Franklin, where she met Chef Rabasa, and the two soon formed a partnership both in life and business. When the COVID pandemic radically altered the dining landscape, Stewart joined Rabasa’s nascent coffee company, Applied Arts, as a co-founder. Opening a Bywater cafe seemed a perfect opportunity for Stewart to delve into her Norwegian heritage and share its delicacies with the Crescent City.
