APRIL 13, 1988
Sonja’s Hus in the Regency Inn, East Grand Forks, is a homey, cheery and rather quiet little place to go for lunch. The wallpaper is bright blue with a white pattern. There are dainty bouquets of permanent daisies on the table. The booths are deep blue with red cushions. The backs of the wooden booths and the valance for the drapes are decorated with rosemaling, a graceful Norwegian style of painting. The walls are decorated with Norwegian art pieces.
The food is reasonable, especially if you choose the specials. Each day, the coffee shop has two lunch choices for $2.29. Last week, I tried the soup, salad bar and sloppy joe combination, offered as a special. Constant Companion asked, as he often does, for a French dip. It was $3.95.
The coffee shop was rather quiet when we came, but it wasn’t long before many of the tables were filled. Two waitresses were doing double duty there for a while.
Our waitress was Jane. She didn’t have to tell us because she wore a nametag. I thought that was a good idea. She invited me to help myself to the soup and salad bar as she left to put in our order. The salad bar was nice, small but adequate, and all of the items seemed fresh. Sometimes salad bars get so big they are unmanageable. You’ll find rubbery vegetables and French dressing slopped across the carrots. Not so at Sonja’s Hus. There was one large metal bowl of lettuce mixed with shredded red cabbage and it was replenished. There were several items nearby but not a lot more than would be used.
I started my salad bowl with lettuce on the bottom. I carefully added a couple of broccoli flowerets and three wedges of tomato. Out of respect for my elevated cholesterol count, I used cottage cheese for a topping. I finished it off with a sprinkling of sunflower seeds and grated cheese. Then I took a cup of beef noodle soup. It was good. The noodles were plentiful and the beef was thinly sliced and lean. The broth was a tad too salty.
It took a while, but my sloppy joe arrived. The meat had a good flavor. I was going to skip the potato chips, but they were better than most chips. So I ate them all and looked out the window to see where my self-control had gone. Meanwhile, CC was examining his French dip, which he said was pretty good. The au jus in which he was to dip his beef sandwich was a little on the oily side.
We had coffee and took our time. Some of the other customers were farmers who had been to a meeting in the Regency Inn. Former UND football coach Jerry Olson was sitting nearby, so I asked, “Would you rather be coaching football or farming?”
Olson grinned and said, “It depends on who’s winning.” Then he told us he was about to start planting wheat on his farm near Hoople, N.D. I noticed he ordered the other $2.29 special, chicken, potatoes and vegetable.
Before we left, I visited with Kirsten Jones. She is in charge of Sonja’s Hus coffee shop and Ferdinand’s dining room in the Regency Inn. Her father was born near Erskine, Minn., she said, “and the whole family is Norwegian. So we wanted to use a Norwegian theme in the coffee shop.”
Kirsten threw a little Norwegian into the conversation, enough to convince me she is Norwegian. I knew it for sure when she said, “Uff da.”
The Regency Inn and Sonja’s Hus no longer operate in East Grand Forks.