The Dinner
It is Oct. 20, and Vermont’s sanctuary is essentially transformed into a lutefisk holding pen. In the pews sit families with their children, along with a vast array of seniors waiting for the feast ahead.
Names are called over a microphone, calling groups to the dining tables. Only ten people at a table are allowed, no exceptions. The dining room scene is chaotic, yet still orderly and delicious.
The food gracing the tables consists of cranberry sauce, butter, melted butter and a plate of homemade lefse, a traditional Norwegian flatbread.
The dinner is set up family style, and attentive waitresses keep track of hungry eyes. Food is constantly passed around. More melted butter. More gravy. More meatballs. And eventually, the reason everyone is there—lutefisk.
The smell could be worse, but it’s undeniably fishy. What’s on the plate is a different story, however. The gelatinous, jiggly, pale, steaming creature is something else entirely. Try to prepare yourself.
Photo by: Molly Reppen
“Pour a lot of butter on it, you won’t taste a thing!” says a fellow diner from the opposite end of the table. It’s easy to be horrified.
But as you bring the fish to your mouth, you’ll be surprised that it won’t be as awful as you expect. Tasting more like fish and butter, eating the lutefisk is indeed an adventure.
Just in case your stomach is not quite full enough, homemade Norwegian cookies are passed around on a huge platter before you leave.
While the lutefisk dinner is great fundraiser for this Wisconsin countryside church, it is more importantly a great time and place to come together and celebrate the past and present with family, strangers and friends.
“I think this dinner here at Vermont is strong enough where it will continue to be handed down,” says Christensen. “Ya know, there won’t be a generational gap where people will forget about it.”
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