Trondheim - Norway - page 370

Burgers, Bangers & a Soccer Fetish
Your choice of sports bars in athletic-conscious Trondheim will eventu-
ally say a lot about your politics and your cultural background. And in
a town where discussions about sports can gobble up large portions of
a long winter night, choosing which of the town's two major sports
bars to hang out in can be important indeed.
The more Anglophilic of the two is the Kings Cross Pub & Shake-
speare Restaurant, Nodre Gate 7 ( & 73-50-37-26 ). Battered, woodsy,
and named after the subway station in one of London's earthier dis-
tricts (Kings Cross), it welcomes as many as 600 screaming fans, some
of them imported for specific televised matches from as far away as
Denmark. Stenciled onto the walls and ceilings are some of Will Shake-
speare's pithier verses, adding food for thought to a menu of sand-
wiches, salads, and pub grub whose portions are recommended for
appetites that are 1) peckish, 2) quite hungry, 3) starving, or 4) “I'm a
pig.” Beers and cocktails are imaginative and varied, and the place can
be a lot of fun. Hours are Monday to Friday 11:30am to 3am, Saturday
10:30am to 3am, Sunday noon to midnight.
In friendly competition is Harvey's, Nordre Gate 23 ( & 73-53-60-56 ),
which is bigger, glossier, more technologically sophisticated, and much
more tuned to North American, as opposed to European, tastes in
sports, drinks, and food. A total of seven TV screens play up to a max-
imum of two separate sporting events simultaneously. The food is bet-
ter too—more closely akin to the juicy-steaks-with-all-the-fixings kind
of cuisine you'd expect in the slaughterhouse district of Chicago. Plat-
ters cost from 59NOK to 159NOK ($8.40-$23), and despite the high-
tech emphasis on state-of-the-art broadcasting, there's something cozy
and retro about this place. It's pure, reheated Americana with enough
sporting and down-home memorabilia to add a soothing note of
kitsch. It's open Monday to Wednesday from 4pm to midnight, Thurs-
day and Friday 4pm to 3am, Saturday noon to 3am, and Sunday 4pm
to 1am.
tries (and sometimes succeeds) to emulate the cynical absurdities of Salvador
Dalí himself. There's recorded, highly danceable music that plays every Friday
and Saturday from 11pm till closing, at which time there's a cover charge of
30NOK to 50NOK ($4.25-$7.10), depending on the mood of the door staff.
The place is open Monday to Thursday from 11am to 1:30am, Friday from 3pm
to 3:30am, and Saturday from noon to 3:30am. Chess players and hipsters are
welcome, and anything to do with the colors selected by Princess Martha-Louise
for the royal wedding in Trondheim in May 2002 (soft pink and mint green) are
expressly forbidden. Here, at least, it's better to stick to basic blacks and neutral
monochromes. Brattørgate 7. & 73-87-14-40.
Den Gode Nabo (“The Good Neighbor”) Pub This is our favorite pub
in Trondheim. It occupies the cellar of a 250-year-old warehouse. You enter a
low-ceilinged labyrinth of rough-hewn timbers and planking, eventually choos-
ing a seat from any of dozens of slightly claustrophobic banquettes, being