Ah . . . the Lure of Lutefisk: If You Serve It, They Will Come

Tucked away in a nondescript building on a side street near the Van Nuys courthouse is the place for lutefisk.

Lutefisk?

That’s a dish made from fish found in the frigid waters off Norway that is reputedly so smelly that, before it can be eaten, it must be soaked for a week in lye to counteract its pungency.

Some Norwegians will tell you it’s as close as the non-Norwegians who complain about its stench will ever get to manna from heaven.

(Remember however, this is Norway, a place where skimmed milk cheese is eaten with syrup, and where cured mutton roll, headcheese and fish pudding are not imaginary names of foods you made up to gross out your little sister, but actual delicacies.)

The king of this hill of strange cuisine is lutefisk, a white and rubbery-looking dish created by soaking cod in salt, then lye, and serving it with butter or cream sauce--though the purists prefer it plain.

But it’s more than just a stinky fish. It’s a matter of ethnic pride.

“You either love it or you hate it,” explained Dan Kubly, a Norwegian-American who is president of the local Sons of Norway chapter.

“My wife hates it, but then again, she’s Swedish--what do they know?”

We were discussing lutefisk at the Van Nuys lodge of the Sons of Norway Norrona Chapter No. 50, where the lodge cooked up 1,300 pounds of the stuff . . . er . . . delicacy last weekend for the hungry sons and daughters of Southern California’s far-flung Norwegian community.

Despite the “love it or loathe it” attitude toward lutefisk, the dinners have become so popular that the lodge has had to offer the family-style meals at two sessions of two nights each--one in January, one in November--to accommodate the 800 to 1,000 people who show up, driving from as far away as San Diego.

The fish itself comes from a bit farther away: by refrigerated truck from a place called Mike’s Lutefisk in Glenwood, Minn.

Minnesota is the home of lutefisk (pronounced “lude-a-fisk”) in America, a place lutefisk lovers revere, the land where lutefisk reigns. A couple of years ago, the town of Madison, Minn., had to cancel its lutefisk-eating contest because no one wanted to compete any more with the guy who could eat eight pounds in one sitting.

But the local home of lutefisk is Van Nuys--where outside the lodge’s dining room last Saturday night, Kris Oeland was neatly cutting the foot-and-a-half lutefisk filets--which arrived frozen in plastic buckets--into manageable portions.

He loves helping. Been doing these dinners since he was a child. Just don’t expect him to partake, even if he is of Norwegian blood.

“I don’t eat it,” he said with Nordic brevity. “I cut it, they eat it.”

The fish gets its name (literally, “lye fish” in Norwegian) because it is soaked in lye for 10 days (no one at the lodge knew why, though some guessed because it smells so bad before that), then soaked in water (to get the lye out?), before it is eaten.

Then it’s placed in hot water, but “only until the water just starts to boil or else it gets too mushy,” cautioned a cook in the lodge’s crowded kitchen.

“It doesn’t taste good mushy,” said Kubly, the others nodding in agreement.

Everyone seemed to have an anecdote about lutefisk in their youth: One man said he ate it almost every day as a child. For another, it was reserved for Christmas Day dinners only, no matter how much he craved it. Still another refused to eat it, “So I got to eat hamburgers instead.”

But people come to the dinners not just to plunk down $12 ($5 for kids) to stuff themselves with all the lutefisk they can eat, but also to hang onto ethnic traditions that hold less and less attraction for their children.

“We haven’t been successful in getting the young people, the people up to age 35,” Kubly said. “When people get into their 50s, then they become more concerned about their heritage. Getting the young people involved is very difficult for our organization.”

Still, if there’s any doubt about the importance of the dinners, it should be noted that the committee boasts 10 members, more than double the number on any of the lodge’s other committees.

And if you serve it, they will come, regardless of rain, traffic, or natural disaster. Two weeks after January’s earthquake more than 800 people showed up for the lutefisk.

The diners are not expected to live on lutefisk alone. There are also boiled potatoes, a bread that looks like a corn tortilla (“but much better,” the Nords say) called lefse; and for those who have no interest in Norwegian fish, Swedish meatballs--350 pounds of them.

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The most spirited show up in their bunads, traditional Norwegian formal dress fit to wear to a wedding or funeral. Though they vary in different regions, the most popular at last week’s dinner was a men’s version consisting of a white shirt, a red and black vest, dark blue knickerbockers and black shoes with a kind of elaborate silver-looking design on the buckle.

Asked about the shoes, a man done up in the regalia responded: “For $200 they better be good.”

Others however didn’t wear bunads from their ancestral region because their costumes would be boring.

“My family was from Valdres,” Dan Kubly said, with a trace of what seemed like regret. “The bunads there aren’t very colorful.”

Last year an Orange County rock band gave themselves the name Lutefisk.

Why?

“We just wanted to name ourselves after a disgusting food,” the lead singer said.

Woe is lutefisk.