Viking Pizza & Kabob

SWEDEN 🇸🇪

COVID-19 UPDATE: A few tables outside make a good shady place for lunch, the small interior is open for those that prefer.

📍3740 San Fernando Road, Glendale, Verdugos

Since Viking Pizza & Kabob showed up at the far southern reaches of Glendale in 2015, it has been teasing passersby with the promise of something not seen in the rest of Southern California: Swedish-style pizza. Most might whiz on by with a furl of the eyebrows and think that is not a thing, but if you have ever been to Sweden or even just been around Swedish people, certainly you will have been exposed to their thoughts on pizza.

Swedish-style pizzas are a relatively new occurrence, a marriage between the mid-century migration of pizza northward with the foods of Turkish and Balkan-descended people who started coming in the 1970's to Sweden. These days shops and street-side kiosks offering both pizza and kabobs are ubiquitous, but in the past few decades a pizza with the toppings of a kabob sandwich has become something of a national dish of Sweden.

Thankfully you know you are in for the real deal if only reading the name of this San Fernando Road pizza joint. They have kabobs on their own as well, and many types of pizzas as Swedes love loading their pies with bananas, curry, peanuts, and much more! But it makes sense to start with the star kabobpizza, or the "upgraded" version which they name the Viking ($10.99 medium, below).

Besides the thinly sliced chunks of kabob over the mozzarella, you will find shredded iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and feta cheese. Swedish-style pizzas are all baked on a thin cracker crust like a Chicago tavern-style, but with a thicker rim and charred edges. There is almost always some type of sauce drizzled onto a Swedish pizza, either a béarnaise or garlic or both. The one on this might fall into the former category, but reads like an ultra-sweet mayonnaise.

A bottle of Louisiana hot sauce shows up at the table, but taking the last topping of peperoncini from the center, biting off the bottoms, and letting their juices fall over each slice works even better for a soft little kick. The mild toppings of the Viking might be overwhelmed with that bayou heat. These feferoni are pickled and zippy, the type of kick that works very well.

No matter which pizza you choose, and even whether you like it or not, this place is a treasure. Where else can you find the happy marriage of Balkan and Italian favorites, filtered through a Swedish palate (via an Armenian-Swedish owner) and brought to Los Angeles for us all to enjoy? And because this is Glendale, you can be sure there is an Armenian coffee ready for you at the end of the meal.

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