I’ve been meaning to write this for a few days.

While Henry and I were out on our photographic road trip last week, the food we ate followed no map. To avoid getting “hangry,” our meals simply appeared when they had to – sometimes forgettable, occasionally regrettable, and now and then surprisingly good and worth writing about.

Over five days on the road, I found myself eating two very different versions of a Swedish classic and, arguably, my favorite lunchtime choice whenever available: the open-faced shrimp sandwich. Both versions were edible, but only one deserved to be photographed.

The one pictured above was in a different league entirely and quite possibly one of the best I’ve ever eaten.

It was the work of an artisan at the restaurant Skäret, located on the wooden promenade in the harbor, by someone who gets that a proper shrimp sandwich (räkmacka) is not about dumping a handful of shrimp onto fluffy, tasteless white bread with a smear of generic mayonnaise. It’s about balance. Texture. Taste. Composition.

The räkmacka itself is very much a product of Sweden’s 20th-century food culture. It grew out of the smörgås tradition – open-faced sandwiches served as meals rather than snacks – and became popular as shrimp became more accessible along the west coast, particularly in Bohuslän.

By the mid-1900s, the shrimp sandwich had settled into its now familiar form: buttered bread, crisp lettuce, sliced egg, generous amounts of hand-peeled shrimp, dill, lemon, and mayonnaise. Simple ingredients, but exacting. There’s nowhere to hide.

At its best, it reflects something distinctly Swedish: restraint, clarity, and respect for raw ingredients. And when it’s done right, as this one was, it doesn’t need anything else. It’s perfection.