People always ask me what I miss most about the u.s
and it's actually not the weather. To many people's surprise it's actually the food and
restaurants. And i'll explain that in the very end of the video what I mean by the restaurants,
because there's something that the us has that sweden doesn't have, and it's a
huge major difference. It's a billion dollar idea for sweden. So stick around to the end
to see what we're talking about there. But before we get to that we are going
to talk about the top 10 differences between swedish restaurants and american restaurants.
So there's one thing that you always complain about when we go out to eat at restaurants
and that is the service. Yeah the service in sweden is not great. There are restaurants
that have good service. We actually went to one this weekend in gothenburg.
Amazing service. But the vast majority of restaurants have
sub-standard service. Yeah like you can sit down and they show you to the table and then you can
wait like five minutes before they even come and acknowledge you. Uh it takes a long time to get
the food, and they don't really ask how the food is tasting. Yeah and I might be a little
bit more critical than most people because i've worked in many restaurants when I was a teenager,
growing up and through college. So I pay attention to service. And for example one thing that you
learn in the united states is never let someone's drink get empty. So when their drink is about 10%
remaining, you come up what can I offer another drink. You always offer desserts. You make sure
that the table is cleaned between the appetizers and the main course. You're always refilling the
water. I just feel like the hustle is missing. Yeah the hustle is missing from swedish service
and that brings us into number two. Why we think that the service isn't as good here as it is in
the u.s and that has to do with the tipping. Yeah so united states it's customary to tip between 10%
and 20% of the cost of the meal towards the tip of the waiter. So for example if a meal costs you
$100, you would tip anywhere between 10 US dollars and 20. And I know that europeans absolutely hate
tipping because when I was a a server and we had europeans come into the restaurant,
no one would want to take the table because we knew they weren't going to get a tip.
Tipping incentivizes people to perform better, so if you know that the better service you give the
higher chances of a better reward. Then I think that's why the service in the US is superior,
because the servers know they're going to get tipped if they do a better job.
I have two things to say about that. Number one, we do tip but we don't tip as much. That's true.
And the second, when I lived in the USA and you had really bad service at a restaurant,
americans still gave a lot of tip, even if the service was bad. You're supposed to give
tip to the people that do a good job, which I found really annoying that you would still
give more of your money to someone that didn't do the job. When I go to eat I want to have an
experience and to be taken care of and i'm willing to tip 10% to 15% for that.
Another difference i've noticed from living in sweden is the lunch culture. So in the u.s you
normally go out to lunch with your co-workers and you have an hour break. You kind of get out of
the office, you just unwind for a minute, you go to lunch you talk about things. In sweden,
I noticed from day one, I thought it was so so interesting was that everyone brought a lunch,
and there was like 10 microwaves in the kitchen at work and everyone put in their
lunch and sat around the table. So that's that is a huge difference. Yeah and I don't know why
it is like that, I guess you cook dinner every night and you have leftovers. Like if we make you
know salmon we have more salmon we just bring that to lunch the day after. And I mean it's cheaper.
I mean you've already cooked the food it's just like is that going to go to waste in your house.
One thing we have in the USA that you don't see so much in sweden, and we definitely have these
a lot in Los Angeles is drive-throughs. So you can have drive-through coffee, you have to drive
through starbucks, you have drive-through laundromats, you have drive-through and of
course you have to drive through fast food chains. There's a lot of drive-throughs in
the USA. I think a lot of people are just more lazy over there. More lazy and they're in the
car more often. They spend more time in the cars because there are longer distances. If you're
going from point A to point B you need to get a coffee on the way. Here it's a smaller city center
if you work in the city you can just go to the nearest cafe and get a coffee. And they
have these drive-through cities if you're driving through remote parts of the country. So let's say
you're driving from Los Angels to Las Vegas, it's a five-hour drive through the desert there there
are cities of drive-through restaurants. And i'm not exaggerating. There are 15 to 20 chains. So
your mcdonalds, your "el pollo loco", your "taco bell", your "burger king", "jack-in-the-box",
"arby's." There is every fast-food restaurant you can imagine and they all have drive-throughs.
Yeah it's really bizarre actually and I guess the city was built right after the restaurants came.
I mean there's nothing else there it's just just drive-through restaurants and some gas stations
and that's it. Yeah and they're double lane drive-throughs, and yeah it's really bizarre.
One thing I noticed when I was living in the USA was there was a lot of busboys.
They are pouring the water for you, doing this and that, and I haven't really seen that in the in in
sweden. I haven't seen that. You have the person welcoming you when you come into the restaurant,
and then you have your server that comes and fills up your water and stuff, but you don't really have
the terminology busboy. Yeah so busboys are or bus girls are the people that just clean the tables
and bring out new dishes and things like that. So they're kind of like
one step below a server. And if you want to break into the restaurant industry and become a server,
you start as a busboy and kind of work your way up. Yeah I started as a busboy
and I loved it. You also got tips. You got the servers to share their tips with the busboys.
But yeah they don't have that in sweden. No really just the server. Yeah one thing that
drives me crazy about restaurants in sweden is the hours. So they open later and they close earlier.
Yeah especially on weekdays. That's true major, restaurants here in the city of gothenburg, you
can't have a meal after nine o'clock. No that's true. People don't really go out to eat dinner
on a weekday as much as you do on the weekends. On the weekends you can go out dinner at 10 o'clock.
I think during weekdays they closed the kitchen around like eight or nine. Yeah and on weekends
we I would say like 10 or 11. So yeah it's a big difference for sure but that then again people
don't really go out to eat as much. I don't know if americans cook as much as swedes do. I mean
I know that there's millions of amazing chefs in the USA but I feel like people don't really cook
as much at home. I guess it depends where you are what city and your age and so on, but I mean in
Losa Angeles we would eat out all the time. Yeah you go to restaurants all the time. I've noticed
now with coronavirus, all of your friends, every single one that I have on instagram,
i've never seen them post any any type of food before, and now all I see is people just posting
pictures of what they eat, because now they can't go out. So they have to be inside and cook.
Brunch culture is a huge thing in the us and especially in Los Angeles. So sunday
brunch is a bit of a party and people get together all their friends, you go out to
a restaurant that is usually like a trendy cool restaurant, they might have like live music,
they might have someone performing. Usually there might be a sports game on. And there's always
bottomless mimosas. Bottle mimosas, eggs benedict, yeah pancakes, bacon, waffles. It's kind of like
hangover food. Yeah it's a really popular thing to do in your 20s. I mean that was a huge thing.
Sunday brunch. And it usually turns into a party. They do it in australia too actually.
I lived in australia we did sunday brunches a lot. Yeah but you don't have that in sweden
too much. We go for brunch but we wouldn't like turn it into a party. You would have a
coffee with your pancakes, but you wouldn't have bottomless mimosa. Right you could have like one
glass of wine or something, but I feel like on sundays you don't really want to party and drink
because then you wake up hungover on monday. They call it sunday fun day. It's a Los Angeles thing
I guess. I mean there's so many weird LA things really. But people would party to like yeah 5 p.m.
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It's really hard to find reviews of restaurants in sweden. I know there's trip advisor and you
can use google reviews, but one thing that everyone has in the USA is an app called
yelp. And yelp is an app that allows you to review products, services and goods. So hairdressers,
going to get your eyebrows fixed, or whatever restaurants, at clothing stores, you can write
your doctors, yeah but yelp is huge. And you always yelp a restaurant before you go there. Yep
and if you don't know what you're in the mood for you just go on yelp and you browse the best
rated restaurants near you. You can read reviews from people. So that's one thing that I missed
coming here was yelp. And i'm surprised no one has started anything is there anything similar. I mean
I would say tripadvisor is like the european version of it but tripadvisor is a pretty bad
website. I think it's the experience isn't great. Yeah really bad, like the website in general.
There is yelp, there is yelp in sweden or like in europe, but no one uses it so there are no
reviews. Right so that's like we should start a swedish yelp and if we talk about alcohol ,that
is a major difference too I would say. The pricing of alcohol. I mean sweden is known for having high
prices on alcohol. I would say like one of the highest in europe almost. The taxes on alcohol are
insane. So if you go out to dinner here you can only get, I mean depends on how much you want
to spend, but you typically get one glass of wine or two glasses of wine. In the u.s it's
much cheaper of course so I feel like the dinners get a little bit crazier. Yeah it's more of like
a thing on in Los Angeles to like go to a bar on a saturday, and well I guess we do that here in
sweden too, it's just corona time so yeah you've forgotten. I forgot what the real world's like.
Okay the biggest difference between swedish and american food culture, and restaurants, and
the thing that I miss the most about the united states, and it's a huge huge huge opportunity for
sweden. I hope someone brings this to sweden. It'll change swedish food culture and the way
people eat food, and their habits and so on. And that is the concept of "fast casual dining."
so in sweden let's say you go to the gym after work, it's seven o'clock and you're heading home,
and you just want to get a bite to eat on the way home from the gym. Or you just met a friend,
or you worked late that night you're heading home, and you want to just get something to eat.
In sweden you have two options. You have you have "casual dining" which is a restaurant that you go
in and sit down. You have to spend an hour there, you look on the menu you have a server come and
so on. And the other option is "fast food." so you can go to mcdonald's or MAX. Yeah in the USA there
is a billion dollar industry called "fast casual." when I go out to eat, the majority of the time,
this is the food I get. These are these are things like "chipotle," "jersey mike's", "tender greens",
"mendocino farms", "sweet greens." those sort of restaurant chains that are in the middle of
fast food and sit down dining. And they're healthier than fast food so it's still like
fast casual, but it's not like eating a mcdonald's hamburger. It's still like fresher food. It's
healthier than casual dining too. Yeah it's it's usually some sort of lettuce based
meal, or sandwich. With proteins and good foods. It's affordable, quick, and easy. And
you can't find anything like that in sweden. There are places, but that's another thing,
they close so early. So if you're going home from the gym at eight o'clock at night, they've already
closed. Right because they are more open for the lunch guests. So we have you know "holy greens"
we have "beets" and "wrapped burrito bar." we have those type of food or restaurants,
but they close like a six or something. One that I love is "jersey mike's", it's basically like
a higher end version of "subway." really good deli meat sandwiches. "chipotle" which is like
"wrapped burrito bar", but my favorite by far is "mendocino farms." it's healthy, fresh affordable
salads, sandwiches and soups. This is just something that is missing from sweden. And
I want to start a fast casual restaurant. I mean it would be so popular here because there's a huge
market gap that needs to be filled. I just think it is such a huge opportunity. And if there's any
restauranteurs out there, any entrepreneurs that need an idea, go to the USA go to Los Angeles and
just go to all of these fast casual restaurants. And bring back the concept of sweden.
It's a million dollar, billion dollar idea in the making. So I hope someone acts on it.
Yeah you talk about this like every day. I wish they were fast casual dining here.