Sunday. Evening. Restaurant talk.

When the waiter launched into his third coughing fit, I was already halfway out the door of the lunch place. The food hadn’t even arrived yet, but I could tell my friend wasn’t comfortable either.

Why didn’t the waiter step outside for some fresh air – or at least duck into the dish room – instead of coughing his lungs out right before serving our lunch?

Apparently, he didn’t get the memo about my becoming squeamish with age. These days, I genuinely feel nauseous when strangers cough or blow their noses near me – or worst of all – clear their throats so you can actually hear the phlegm floating around at way too close range.

I’ve even reached the point where I turn away when someone barfs in a movie. I do have a friend, though, who you can’t even mention stuff like that to without triggering a sequence of dry heaves.

The restaurant business has changed a lot since I worked as a bartender, DJ, and waiter more than 30 years ago. Not surprising. A lot has changed. Not least myself.

Most restaurants I’ve eaten at in Malmö in recent years have been more or less meh. Sure, the staff do their jobs and the food is often decent – but there’s no presence, no pride, no pizazz, no genuine joy. It’s all mechanical and transactional.

At least until it’s time to tap your card and you’re encouraged to tip 5, 10, 15, or 20 percent for a mediocre meal carried from the kitchen to my table by a charmless individual over the course of about 30 seconds.

Because that’s when these zombie servers suddenly come alive – smiling broadly, turning on the flattery, yet still with an attitude. As if they want me to feel grateful for the privilege of spending the last of my cash there.

Contradictorily, I usually still leave a 5% tip, even though I’m not entirely sure why. Probably some warped sense of solidarity I still feel toward strangers working in a business I once made my living in.

Sometimes I wonder if Swedish restaurateurs, like their American counterparts, are quietly shifting part of their staff’s wage costs onto us guests. We truly live in a shameless age.

During my ten years in the business, it was almost all cash. So simple and smooth. Sure, some people had bank cards, and occasionally a yuppie would flash a silver or gold Amex.

I remember once serving a beer to a guy whose last name was Cash, who carried a Platinum Amex rumored to have no spending limit. Ironically, Mr. Cash never paid with cash.

Back to tipping.

In those days, when a large beer cost 48 Swedish kronor, nine times out of ten you’d get two kronor as a tip. Mostly because the guest didn’t want to stuff the loose change back into their pocket. But maybe also because you’d actually made an effort and been kind from order to bill.

I remember working on the wobbly canal boat Åtta Glas in Göteborg in the early 1990s, where they served fillet mignon Black & White and a large beer for 95 kronor.

There, tips were always rounded up, and we pooled them among everyone working that shift – cooks, servers, dishwashers, and us behind the bar. I worked there with brother Nick, and for some reason, most of the patrons were British construction workers.

After a long day and night (a 15 hour shift) at Åtta Glas, I could often step ashore with a thousand kronor cash in my pocket. And how much of that did I save? Exactly. Zero.

Looking back, I realize how lucky I was working in hotels and restaurants in the 1980s and early 1990s. It helped finance my vague artistic ambitions, and it gave me the chance to work with solid role models: Mannerström at Johanna, Lenta at Munken, Alexandra Charles at Änkan, Nolle at Hotel Riksgränsen, Ulf and Lalle Johansson at Lionis in Gothenburg.

Later in life, I’ve worked with many excellent restaurateurs and hoteliers, too – though then in a creative capacity.

But when I was younger, I was a dedicated seasonal worker, hopping from place to place like a restless butterfly, soaking up everything I could learn before moving on.

I learned something from everyone I worked for or with. Above all, I learned that guests should leave a restaurant full, happy, and inclined to come back – and to tell others about their good dining experience.

For me, the restaurateur’s presence has always mattered more than what they decided to name their place. They’re the star, the ringmaster, and the air-traffic controller all in one.

Their aura should figuratively flutter over the dining room – not just infuse what comes out of the kitchen, but everyone who works there. I’ve always felt that meeting the owner adds something extra to the visit.

I wrapped up my long, winding restaurant career by working as a lecturer at an international vocational college for the hospitality industry, GIHC in Gothenburg (thank you, Lars Olemyr).

Now, as a guest, consistency is what matters most to me. Wherever we travel, I want to quickly find a solid restaurant that reliably delivers good food every time. We have a couple in Malmö, and in most places where we’ve stayed for longer periods.

If I have a positive first experience, I’m happy to return with the expectation that it’ll be at least as good the next time. If it is, I’m hooked.

A restaurant in Athens we tried in early February last year offered us a shot of raki before dinner. Did we go back? Four times in three weeks. Not because of the booze, but because of the gesture. The food was fantastic, too. I’ve loved Greek cuisine ever since my first Interrail trip to Corfu in 1983.

It’s amazing how simple it can be to surprise a guest with a small but noticeable gesture.

This last Saturday evening, Mrs. Raboff and I went out to eat at a simple neighborhood place we’ve enjoyed seven or eight times over the past year.

I chose what turned out to be a heavenly lamb loin with a crispy, creamy gratin. Charlotte had a lovely mushroom risotto.

Shortly before the food arrived, the owner came by to say hello, exchange a few words, and wish us a pleasant meal. When the waitress served our dishes a few minutes later, with a genuine smile and wishing we enjoyed our choices, the intro to Peg by Steely Dan came on.

The restaurant’s playlist was curated, not random. Someone – maybe the owner himself, about my age – had taken the time to put together a thoughtful playlist.

A whole string of songs followed that anyone with halfway decent music taste would appreciate hearing quietly in the background while enjoying dinner and a couple of hours away from everyday obligations.

Aside from my belief that cheese has no place in a classic gratin, we left the restaurant satisfied, full, and ready to return sometime soon.

The lunch place I mentioned at the start, however, I don’t think I’ll ever visit again. Not really because the waiter coughed so much, but because he didn’t realize that it’s simply not okay for a server to repeatedly cough in a dining room.

In my world, that behavior says more about the person who hired him than about the cougher himself.

I’ve long realized that most “restaurateurs” lack a genuine interest in serving good food and making guests feel that their hard-earned money is well spent.

Most restaurant owners have clearly identified that people occasionally need to eat out and have grasped an opportunity to make money from this need. Any real interest in cooking is moderate at best – if it exists at all.

And that’s fine, at least when we’re talking about pizzerias, hot-dog stands, burger joints, or a falafel place. Expectations are adjusted accordingly.

At 62.5, I’ve probably eaten at more than 4,000 different restaurants (100 per year for 40 years) in nearly 70 countries. Probably more than that.

And I did spend ten years working in restaurants. So it doesn’t take long for me to tell a good place from a bad one. I see it in the staff’s jargon, the interior, how the menu presents the food, and how my reasonably well-trained taste buds react to the first bite.

Often, it’s obvious that the owner sees guests as a necessary evil and staff as a cost. When the environment screams poor judgment and the servers lack humility or have a cocky attitude, I know deeper problems are simmering.

Yes, I’ve probably become something of a snob when it comes to restaurants. I have neither the time nor the patience, and I definitely don’t want to spend my money on places where “not good, but expensive” is the unwritten tagline.

The above image was taken by someone, sometime in the summer of 1989, somewhere on an island in Lofoten, Norway.

Go Greenland, go!!!

We’ve been lucky so far this year. While unusually cold, the sun has come out – if not all day long, at least for a while every day. Seeing the blue sky and sun makes this time of winter here in Malmö more bearable. Yesterday, right about the time when I took this photograph, I spoke with Nolle, an old friend and colleague from when I was working/skiing/painting/partying in Riksgränsen, Lapland (1989-1993). Nolle, who has lived in Kiruna for a long time, told me that yesterday, the temperature there was a whopping −25 °C (−13 °F). We spoke of old times, old friends, the trepidations and joys of growing older, and that keeping fit is important for all kinds of good reasons. I kept that in mind this morning when I reluctantly woke up at 5:30, got dressed, and dragged myself to the gym for an hour-long workout. My third this week.

If you know me well enough, you’ll also be cognizant that there are few Swedish eats I love more than an open-faced shrimp sandwich – a räkmacka.

It’s simple in theory, almost absurdly so: a proud little mountain of shrimp, perched on bread, dressed up just enough to feel celebratory, but never so much that it forgets its humble beginnings.

The one above wasn’t just good. It felt like a benchmark.

The first of what will likely become a small procession – maybe even a string – of shrimp sandwiches over the next twelve months. It was also one of the most delicious I’ve had in a long time.

Let’s talk design, because this matters. A thick slice of toasted sourdough, the kind with a proper crust and that faint tang that makes everything above it taste better. This dish has to be made to order – à la minute – to avoid the toasted bread becoming soggy and swampy.

Herbal mayo. Dill. Onions. A boiled egg. And then the shrimp – sweet, cold, briny, piled high with the kind of confidence that suggests the kitchen knows exactly what it’s doing and sees no reason for modesty.

It’s the Swedish version of restraint and indulgence sharing the same plate. Minimal ingredients, maximal intent.

And yes, this may very well have been one of the most expensive räkmackor I’ve ever eaten. But it still seemed reasonably priced – which probably says more about my fascination with this Swedish dish than it does about my ability to objectively discern its true value. Being enchanted often means your internal calculator becomes more of a poet than an accountant.

So yes – this was most likely the first of many. A year of shrimp sandwiches lies ahead.

About an hour ago, just as we sat down to enjoy a simple Sunday dinner, I found out that I’ve lost my friend Elaine Vickery. She passed quietly last night in Santa Rosa, California.

Elaine and I first crossed paths when I was a little boy, and she was a young painter. Sometime in the late ’60s.

My father introduced us, and even though I don’t remember the meeting itself – I was too young – Elaine has, over the past five years, oddly enough, come to feel like part of my entire life. Like one of those threads you don’t see, but that still holds important chapters together.

She had been battling various illnesses for a long time, increasingly so in recent years.

But if I’m being completely honest, I don’t think Elaine died of any of her illnesses. I think she was simply tired of being alone. Her relationship with her son was fraught – neither easy nor good – and she got to see him – and her two grandsons – far too rarely.

I actually think Elaine died of a particular kind of sorrow – the kind that doesn’t sound very dramatic, but still eats you from the inside out.

Our contact really took off when she reached out to me five years ago – at the beginning of the pandemic. After that, it kept going, sometimes daily, until it abruptly ended yesterday. Her son Nate sent me the news a little while ago in a text.

In our correspondence, Elaine was consistently warm and generous. She could be gentle, but never mushy. She didn’t hold back on either critique or praise when I sent her projects I was working on, and that’s exactly why her words mattered. She wasn’t an applause machine. She was an artist – with real integrity.

Art was, naturally, one of our recurring topics, and I loved her naïve, direct painting style and her illustrations.

But Elaine was more than her creative output. She had a rare openness – an “artist’s mind” in the best sense: reflective, philosophical, curious, with a dry wit and a knack for naming feelings with precision when the energy was there, and the pain had eased.

Over time, I also understood something as human as it is brutal: Elaine’s mood swings were often pain-driven. I suspect anyone who’s lived with chronic illness can relate to that sentence.

The tone of her emails followed her body. When symptoms flared up she grew darker, more catastrophic in her thinking, more preoccupied with death – and with that question no one should have to ask, but pain can force on you anyway: Is it worth the fight?

When she felt better, she was lighter, funnier, more forward-looking – as if someone had turned the lights back up in the room.

She also carried a persistent fear of being a burden. At the same time there was a longing for closeness – with her son, her grandsons, her friends. And even with me, in that strange way that can happen between two people who don’t see each other often, but still become important to one another.

In her writing, there was both pride and vulnerability, sometimes in the very same sentence. Sometime last spring, Elaine began confiding in me about the need to create meaning as she could feel life shrinking.

She tried to organize her small house, sort things, plan, distribute her artwork – and she spoke openly about hospice and assisted dying. It wasn’t a cry for drama. It was more an attempt to make sure the final chapter, at the very least, was her own.

I thought about visiting Elaine in California. I thought about it many times. But as so often happens, I kept putting the trip off, prioritizing other places, other obligations.

I put Elaine on the “later” shelf. And now there is no “later” – only “too late.” One of life’s hardest lessons is that you think you have time, until you don’t.

I will remember Elaine as a friend, as an artist – and as a bright, affectionate person whose baseline optimism and humor made our emails and messages both inspiring and entertaining. Even in her fatigue, she was someone who could still see color in the gray. Someone who could point to what was beautiful, even when she herself struggled to reach it.

Rest in peace, dear friend.

Just a few more hours of what’s become a tradition – spending Christmas in Göteborg/Gothenburg. Without getting into any grimy details, the past few days have mirrored the city’s winter weather: mostly clear, with a persistent fog showing up now and then. As per usual, the urge for a prolonged detox is knocking on the door…

I shot this in Botswana during a five-day safari in the Okavango Delta. According to somewhat reliable sources, this bird is a lilac-breasted Roller with the scientific (Latin) name: Coracias caudatus. This birdie will definitely make into my new book project, tentatively titled: Safari – Botswana, Kenya, Morocco & South Africa

Winter in Skåne definitely has its moments. Starting at 16:03 yesterday, Sunday – the winter solstice – the days will slowly but surely begin to grow lighter. Of course, we won’t really notice it for a while; the days are still going to be ridiculously short, and the darkness will linger far too long. But psychologically, I feel much better just knowing we’ve turned the corner. That the curve is finally moving in the right direction.

Especially after our autumn trip, when for three months – with only a few exceptions – we had sunshine and warmth. There’s something about a steady dose of daylight that makes you feel a bit more… human. And when you come back home to Skåne, grey and early dusk, it’s comforting to lean on one simple fact: from now on, minute by minute, the light is crawling its way back.