The fervour for New Nordic cuisine has swept across Tokyo over the past 10 years. In the polished wake of Noma’s two Kyoto pop-ups, it’s easy to assume that Nordic culinary influence in Japan is a fairly recent affair. But decades before the phrase “Japandi” was coined or the first foraged lichen was plated in a minimalist ceramic bowl, two restaurants quietly shaped Japan’s early impressions of Nordic dining: Scandia in Yokohama and Lilla Dalarna in Tokyo.
These pioneering establishments opened in suitably muted fashion: no PR rollouts or brand tie-ins, just a simple mission to offer warm, Scandinavian-style hospitality and culinary curiosity. Both restaurants are still in business, and both have deeply personal origin stories.
Scandia opened in 1963 and sits just minutes from Yokohama’s bustling port. Tucked into a handsome mid-century brick building, the restaurant has a formal upstairs dining room with white linen and port-glass chandeliers, and a more casual first-floor “Garden” bistro with lace curtains and views of Yamashita Park.
At night, Scandia glows like a perfectly preserved artifact of postwar optimism. The building’s brick façade is flanked by red striped awnings and bold neon signage in royal blue and crimson mid-century type. Through the windows is warm table light and shadowy silhouettes; the kind of scene that promises old-school civility and a second helping of lobster. Scandia projects quiet grandeur as opposed to ostentation, it’s a beacon of understated Western elegance from another era.
My party of six climb a red-carpeted staircase lined with carved wooden reliefs depicting scenes of Nordic folklore before tucking into the signature “smörgåsbord deluxe dinner” – a gleaming procession of scalloped crystal platters featuring herring in vinegar and onion, salmon mousse on toast, cured meats, cold lobster, escargot and seafood aspic. All were carefully arranged with lemon wedges and herbs, curled garnishes punctuated the bounty. The tableware, meanwhile, bears tiny painted coats of arms – Swedish blue and yellow, Danish red, and Norwegian red and blue.
I order a smoked salmon appetiser with dill and sour cream, and a filet steak with Madeira sauce. The flavours are creamy, herbal, gently sweet and the plating feels akin to a Scandinavian consulate luncheon circa 1983. Though Scandia’s 91-year-old founder, Yaeko Hamada, no longer gives interviews, her presence still anchors the place. “We have been operating the business with the same motto of ‘customer first’ since 1963,” she notes in the restaurant’s printed mission statement. The executive chef, Hiroyuki Arakawa, echoes this sentiment: “The smiles of satisfied customers spread joy to those around them.”
In contrast, Lilla Dalarna was founded in 1979 and channels a humbler, homespun warmth. It was opened by Seiichi Okubo, a Japanese chef who travelled to Sweden via the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1960s, and remained there for more than a decade – learning the language, working in kitchens and absorbing the Nordic way of life. Upon returning to Japan, he opened a restaurant of his own that sought to share the calming, communal spirit of Scandinavian hospitality. Lilla Dalarna was originally located in Nishi-Ogikubo, a quiet neighbourhood in western Tokyo, before relocating to its current spot in Roppongi, where it serves curious locals, the Nordic embassies and homesick Scandinavians.
A few steps from the Roppongi Hills development, up a discreet stairwell tucked behind a Spanish bar, Lilla Dalarna feels like stepping into a Scandinavian countryside retreat. As a native of the Dalarna region, I recognise some of the accents of the place: Nordic plates in pale blue floral patterns, antique copper pots and cosy lighting redolent of summer evenings.
We started with three kinds of pickled herring and slices of smoked salmon with dill, then shared a bubbling dish of Jansson’s frestelse (temptation), which is a beloved Swedish casserole of potatoes, onions, cream and anchovies. For mains, we chose the signature Swedish meatballs in cream sauce, served with mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam and pickled cucumber. Each plate felt as though it had been summoned from a Nordic family cookbook; heartfelt, gently executed and never fussy. Lilla Dalarna captures the spirit of my homeland with sincerity and care.
Now run by Okubo’s protégé, Chef Endo Yoshio, Lilla Dalarna has evolved with the times while staying true to its roots. “I’ve been part of the restaurant for half its history, and its role in Japanese society has definitely changed”, Endo says. In the early years, Swedish cuisine was largely unknown in Japan. By the 1990s, when Endo joined the kitchen, Japan had become more outward-facing. “We started seeing guests who came in already familiar with Swedish values, who respected what the Nordics stood for.” Lilla Dalarna responded by layering in more tradition: crayfish menus, seasonal semla buns, even cultural tie-ins with embassies and Scandinavian holidays. “And still,” Yoshio says, “our goal has always been to offer a comfortable space and a menu that guests return to.”
Neither Scandia nor Lilla Dalarna followed the path of New Nordic cuisine. You won’t find pine-needle oil or dehydrated sea buckthorn on the menus. Instead, what these restaurants offer is something arguably more radical in 2025: continuity, modesty and an unwavering sense of place. They are neither themed eateries nor nostalgia traps. They are lived-in institutions, where Nordic food has been translated through time, geography and local affection.
At a moment when Scandinavian style in Japan is often flattened into a mood board of wooden design minimalism, Scandia and Lilla Dalarna remind us that Nordic-Japanese culinary exchange began with travel, curiosity and two restaurants that simply kept showing up, year after year, herring plate after herring plate.
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Take a trip to Copenhagen, Stockholm or Oslo right now and you will find these Nordic capitals bereft of locals. The great migration of the Scandinavians to their summerhouses is well underway.
But the type of summerhouse that each of the old Viking tribes favours says a lot about them. A Norwegian views theirs primarily as a base for friluftsliv (open-air living), which involves unnecessarily arduous tasks such as hiking, canoeing or chopping wood in preparation for a winter of crosscountry skiing, downhill skiing and – I wouldn’t put it past them – probably uphill skiing too. The Swedes’ ideal summerhouse is a hut deep in the woods, far from other humans, with no running water, electricity or heating – plus a cloud of flying, biting things that lurks just outside the door. An idyllic blend to appease Sweden’s primary national urges for solitude and masochism.
Fortunately for this Denmark resident, the Danes take a more laissez-faire approach. A Danish summerhouse is a place to chill, talk, sleep, read, drink and pursue other leisurely pleasures, ideally within sight of a beach. For that reason, it will be designed with the lowest possible maintenance in mind: the grass can grow long (it being good for biodiversity is the excuse); the mismatched furniture is part of the vibe; and never mind the sand in the kitchen – it’s a summerhouse, after all.
But best of all, when you buy a Danish summerhouse – as I have just done, completing the final piece of my assimilation – it comes with all the furniture, crockery and bedding from the previous owners. What’s in that cupboard? Ah, two decades’ worth of completed wordsearch books and Donald Duck comics. Is that Chinese vase in the toolshed worth anything? The Søstrene Grene sticker suggests otherwise. Will the oven work (no) and what to do with the tiki-style lounge furniture? The answer: give it away on the front lawn. But don’t forget to put the amateurish art back up when the former owner pops round for a friendly coffee.
Yet while a Danish summerhouse might appear a relaxed place, somewhere to escape the relentless narcissism-of-small-differences status race of Copenhagen’s bridge quarters – the truth is that there is still much to decode in the summerhouse landscape.
Location, of course, is a status symbol. It explains why a house two miles (3.2km) from the sea in Tisvildeleje – the once old money, now just money resort on the north coast of Zealand – will cost as much as one right on the beach elsewhere on the island. Meanwhile, Skagen, at the northern tip of Jutland, is the summerhouse resort of choice for the nouveau riche but only for one specific week in mid-July: week 29 (Danes order their year by the number of the week). Locals refer to this as “Hellerup Week”, after the northern suburb of Copenhagen where said nouveaus and social-media influencers otherwise reside.
The west coast of Jutland holds a special place in Danish hearts and so there are tens of thousands of summerhouses nestled here in the hilly sands that stretch from the German border right up to “Cold Hawaii”, as the northern Jutland surf resort of Klitmøller is known (klit means “dune” in Danish; get over it). But I have never understood the appeal of this coast: for about 363 days of the year, the sea is too rough for swimming and relentless winds whip sand in your face. Is there an exfoliating effect that I’m missing?
Recently, the smart summerhouse money has been heading for the previously unloved island of Lolland to the south of Copenhagen. It’s a bet on the influx of German tourists who will be connected to Lolland via the Fehmarnbelt tunnel, due to open in 2029. But I have a soft spot for the South Funen Archipelago, with its dolphins, fishing harbours and a culture and history all of its own.
As a foreigner, I am free to choose my summerhouse location without all the socio-economic baggage, so I am writing this at my dining table (pine, naturally) looking out on a sandy beach, watching the sun set behind the island in the bay as the local ferry chugs steadily across the horizon. It still cost several times my first flat in Pimlico – for a little wooden shack with a supposedly flat but worryingly bowed roof – but it is, for July at least, home.
