Editor's note: Ann Lemons Pollack, better known as lemons on Serious Eats, checked out the Christmas Lunch at the Norwegian Seamen's Church. Here's what she found!

[Photos: Ann Lemons Pollack]

The multicultural table of New York includes among its many traditions the food of Norway. Last week, we visited the Norwegian Seamen's Church for one of its Christmas lunches, which starred two traditional lamb preparations and at least three dozen other Norwegian dishes.

Fenelar

The cold table, with more than 20 dishes, was crowned with fenelar, smoked leg of lamb. Served sliced as thinly as prosciutto, with a distinct taste of lamb, it is (say Norwegians) one of those foods with a love-or-hate response. We love it, along with the herring, shrimp and other jewels of the table. For those who've never tasted brunost, or brown cheese, the sweetish Norwegian variety, here's the opportunity.

Brunost, or brown cheese

Pinnekjott are salted lamb ribs, braised and served with a side of mashed rutabaga, surprisingly sweet. The warm table also gave us pork meatballs, chunks of fat sausages (their finely ground meat tinged with mace), and roasted pork belly with very crisp skin. All the meats pair well with the tart lingonberry sauce, similar to cranberry but without bitterness.

Plenty of Norwegian is spoken around the room, and where there are Norwegians, there'll be coffee. Here, it was downstairs in the Trygve Lie Gallery, along with fruit, cream horns and the very authentic riskrem med rod saus, a red fruit sauce with what appears to be really, really thick whipped cream. But while there's a taste almost like bits of cheesecake, closer examination reveals rice pudding folded into the whipped cream. Awfully good, and the best coffee we've ever had in a church basement.

There's a Christmas Eve dinner, and after the first of the year, more lunches (minus the Christmas food): on February 1, March 7, and May 2, all Wednesdays.

Norwegian Seamen's Church

317 East 52nd Street, New York NY (map)
212-319-0370
sjomannskirken.no/new-york
norway.org/Christmas-2011