Aaron M.
Yelp
Amazing. And not even that expensive, at least by my Califoreigner standards.
Rumor has it that it takes weeks to get a reservation here, but my coworker and I (traveling on business) decided to chance a walk-in anyway. Are we glad we did. After having a quick drink in what I will call their "waiting hallway" (it's tiny, not a bar, and it's how you get to the bathroom but it does have a shelf for drinks!) for about 20 minutes, we were given a choice of a
"table for 90 minutes" or a "bar seat for 2 hours." I had never been given such a choice before, but took it in a good way to mean that they would actually honor someone else's later reservation for the night. We took the table, and used about 89 of those 90 minutes.
They had an English menu, but I didn't trust myself to choose "correctly" from it, and my coworker was willing to share some risk! So we did whatever the Swedish word would be for Omakase and asked the waiter to choose a few things for us, with notice that we "would eat anything." And did he ever choose well: for appetizers, he recommended the lobster (which came swimming in a perfectly seasoned sauce) and horse tartare (which was perhaps the most tender and perfect seasoned tartare I've ever had), and for mains chose the lamb (again, perfectly tender and magically sauced) and the reindeer, which was perhaps the star of the night, including - I sh!t you not - a 2mm thick "puck" of solid truffle butter on top, which melted onto the meat below. Almost forgot: all of this was preceded by a fresh roll served with some sort of whipped butter concoction on a mini plate below it. I'm not selling it well, but it made the pre-appetizer roll ritual something special. It's worth mentioning that I'm something of a pro-salt eater, and all of these dishes had what I would call "just perfect" salting.
Dessert had to be rushed a bit to stay in our 90 minute limit, but it was also first class - a perfectly executed lava cake.
In the end the damage from this including service and one drink each was "only" $80 per person. I'm telling myself it would've been much more in SF. Next time I'm in Stockholm, I'll see if they'll take another walk-in.