Eating Out in Stockholm

Sunday, October 10, 2010. I thought I would share with you some of the more interesting places we have RECENTLY eaten in Stockholm (we’ve eaten in interesting and/or good places before, but it’s too late to write about them now!). While out on Gamla Stan (the medieval Old Town) recently we ate in a very cool restaurant that was first a monastery and then a prison; the prison used the cells that the monks had slept in and turned them into prison cells. The space dates from the 1300s, and the restaurant had restored some of the cells and also the refectory, and so we ate in a small cell from 700 years ago. They had done a very good job; it was quite evocative.Here is the entrance to the restaurant; the lower (smaller)sign says, "DO you dare to come into our 700 year old prison?" The larger sign is saying Welcome into their medieval prison, with 6 old prison rooms. Cute. This, of course, is Donald; he is sitting in our little "cell," where we had cappucino and a homemade waffle with jam. The cell was about 4.5 feet by 3.5 feet.
And here is the large, heavy iron entrance door to the basement, which basically says that it is from the 1300s, and was a prison until the 1700s. It mentions two kings, including Gustaf III, who would have been a Vasa king.

We also ate recently in a couple of the outdoor cafes (I think I’ve already mentioned how these cafes have blankets for your chair, and many of them also have outdoor heaters, so people can continue to enjoy the outdoors as long as possible. It has gotten quite chilly, and would not be possible to sit comfortably outside to eat without these blankets) that are on Stortorget. Stor=Stockholm, and Stortorget is the old, original Town Square from the earliest town, dating from the late 1200s/early 1300s. Stortorget is surrounded, as are the old parts of many European cities, by the Renaissance-era mansions of wealthy merchants (remember Kosice and Kracow?). It is also the scene of the famous (or infamous) Stockholm Bloodbath, when over 100 Swedish nobles and other leaders were murdered by the Danish King in the early 1500s, after having been promised amnesty for having fought to get rid of Danish rule. Among those murdered were Gustav Vasa’s father and brother, leading to him becoming convinced to lead yet another—this time successful—rebellion against Denmark, which caused Sweden to finally become its own nation (remember this from Uppsala and Leksand?). So as we sat at these cafes, including the Chocolate Café (yes, that’s right, a café dedicated to chocolate and other sweets), we looked out on a market square that was not only beautiful, but also the scene of an historical bloodbath. Oh, that’s right—probably most market squares were (once again, remember Kosice?).The yellow building has the chocolate cafe.

A few nights ago we ate at a restaurant that our guide book had recommended--Cafe Piastowska, a Polish restaurant with a cozy, small room upstairs, a small, cozy room downstairs in the basement, and a larger, cozy room next to that one in the basement. They had faked some of the old-looking elements of the place, but it was still a very old basement (This part of Stockholm is not as old as Gamla Stan, of course, and is probably originally from the Renaissance era. Nearby—just a few blocks from us—is one more important historical area—where the Battle of Brunkeberg was fought against the Danes). The food was excellent; we both had the special, bigos, which is the Polish national dish, also known as Hunters’ Stew. True Hunters’ Stew usually has some sort of game meet in it (boar, venison, rabbit) and sausage; this one had pork and sausage in it, along with the required mushrooms and sauerkraut. We each had our favorite beer from Poland, Zwiec, and Donald had an even better Czech one later, Zlatypramen. We shared the Polish "cheesecake," which is what in Poland is called "Bapci’s (grandma’s) cake" and in Slovakia, "baba’s cake," with the same meaning. Everyone’s grandma must make the same cake my own grandmas made :). I think that’s pretty funny.

Last Saturday we had drinks in the Hanging Bar, 125 feet up over the water, on Sodermalm (South Town). There is an amazing view of the whole city, as well as in all directions across the waterways, and we arrived while it was light out and left when it got dark (that was a few drinks later!). We were with our friends Ryzard (pronounced, as is my cousin’s name, “Reeshard,” with the stress on the first syllable) Sculken (a Polish political émigré to Sweden from about 1969) and his wife Anna, who is 6 months pregnant. Ryzard is a Jew whose mother survived the Warsaw ghetto, in the end, by being taken in as a young pregnant woman, by a Catholic Polish woman who hid her (as Ryzard puts it, at least his mother is one Jew who thinks Polish Catholics aren’t all terrible people). Both Ryzard and Anna are great company (thus the 4-hour “let’s meet for a drink” session).

Today we met our friend Karin (a doctoral student in the department where Don is working) in Gamla Stan, and we took a boat ferry across to Djurgarden (remember where the Vasa and Skansen are, where we biked?), where we walked in the brisk autumn parkland, where the yellow and orange leaves were thick on the ground. WE ate a delicious goulash lunch—along with hundreds of other Stockholmers—at an outdoor café in the park, which doubles as a plant nursery. So our seats—with blankets—were among the end-of-season flowers and bees. Then we continued walking along the water and then back into the city itself, finally stopping to have coffee and tea at yet another outdoor café before heading home at 5:00, just before the autumn sunset (the coming winter darkness, when the sun sets at about 2:00 p.m. by Christmas, is moving towards us quickly, as it needs to in order to lose so much sunlight soon. The daylight hours are noticeably shorter since the Equinox just a couple of weeks ago).

We have learned some important lessons about eating out in Stockholm. First, if there are lots of young people inside, don’t eat there. It will be crowded and noisy. Second, every single place you eat in Stockholm--or in Sweden, for that matter--will have shrimp and/or salmon on the menu. If it is a lunch place, one of the most popular dishes will be some sort of salad that has heaps of cold shrimp. Even the sushi is almost exclusively made of shrimp and salmon—called lax--, with perhaps some tuna thrown in. Third, there are LOTS of Italian places to eat, most of which are actually run by Turks and Kurds. Their pizza is stupendous, with the thinnest crust I have ever seen, being really crunchy and wonderful. There are also lots of Chinese places, and, of course, many “regular” Swedish places to eat. There are NOT many places to get Mexican food, nor “Chinese” places. Fourth, there are LOTS of “pubs” and Irish and British-style bars, though most of them will serve the ubiquitous Swedish beer and not much in the way of Irish or British beers. We went to one place that billed itself as “the original Irish Pub in Stockholm,” and could not get an Irish beer. They had had ONE on their menu, but no longer served it. It was QUITE disappointing J

And fifth—we were going to mention to Ryzard something that we had noticed, which is that the cafes, pubs and restaurants are FILLED with people younger than 35 years old, while it is almost impossible to see ANYONE older than that out in the evening for food or drinks. When one goes out at anywhere from about 4:00 p.m. on, it seems as though all of Stockholm is made of young adults, with no older adults existing at all. But he brought it up first, saying that Stockholm SEEMED to be a city of young people. The explanation is that Swedes do not share the general European fashion of going out for food and/or drinks; it is a very new phenomenon in Sweden, and therefore is something only the young do. The older adults never did it before, and are still staying home in the evening, cooking supper.

Oh, by the way, I’ve also realized one of the reasons the young women here are so skinny: they smoke like fiends! My guess is that the amount of booze and cigarettes one takes in is inversely related to the amount of food. Oh—except that they also eat the delicious sweets. Maybe the one thing missing from their diet is actual meals!