P L Johnson’s Dining Room

Bishop Hill is a tiny village that preserves its origins as a 19^th-​century Swedish communal settlement. Some period buildings, a few arts and crafts shops and museums with elderly docents ready to talk your ear off, and, hey, this little dining room — open for lunch only, I believe — in the back of one of the shops.
Wander in for an early lunch and find the décor of a Swedish grandmother’s parlor, with a couple friendly and courteous women in heimlich farmwife outfits bustling around between serving the customers and tending the pots bubbling away on the stove.
So since it’s a Swedish colony, I ordered Swedish meatballs, that being more to my taste than sandwiches, and got a little pot with nicely al dente noodles, a creamy sauce, and maybe eight modest-​sized meatballs, much richer, thicker-​textured, and gamier (in the good sense, not an off-​tasting sense) than most of what I’ve had as Swedish meatballs at Ikea or elsewhere. Probably more authentic this way.
Even though it was a quiet, cold and almost rainy-​ish day, and the town had seemed nearly deserted in the morning, the restaurant got pretty full and hopping by noon when I finished. But those farmwives served their customers with vigor, dedication, and such good spirits that the apology for being slow with my check, while welcome, was completely unnecessary. I was basking in the friendly, warm atmosphere.