Sweden! Land of Abba, Eurovision and Fika.
We visited Stockholm for a long weekend and for once we were staying in a hotel so we could make the most of all the restaurants the city had to offer. Delicious food descriptions incoming!
The first day we started off with a delicious breakfast at Nordic Light hotel. A typically fantastic Scandinavian spread with lots of fruit, rye bread and pickles. There was also a separate table with soya yoghurt, soya milk and vegan margarine. We did sneak in an avocado one day but in general it was tasty and filling.
We then walked up to Djurgården, a beautiful park on the island with most of the museums. After wandering through the park we headed to Rosendals Trädgård, a beautiful organic vegetable garden and orchard with a cafe. We weren’t going to have anything but spotting the word vegan we had a nutty energy ball type thing, a slice of apple cake and an apple from the orchard. Prices were pretty high but not higher than the rest of Stockholm (you get used to it after a while!). Rosendals was a lovely place to find in the middle of the city and clearly everyone else thought so as it was very busy.
After finishing here, we wandered back into Gamla Stan (the old town). We were pretty hungry by this point so ducked into Hermitage which had a fairly standard veggie/vegan buffet. It was relatively cheap for the area and one of the only options in the old town. They had a good range of hot food and salads with only a couple of non vegan things. Nothing amazing but it satisfied a hunger! Then it was across the street to Naturbageriet Sattva Gamla Stan, an almost entirely vegan bakery that does a range of pastries and cinnamon rolls. We went there several other times throughout the weekend…delicious! And so so cheap at about £2 for a bun.
Coffee interlude: Drop coffee really know what they’re talking about and it’s a lovely, light space to take a rest.
And what was for dinner? The Plant! This is a small stand inside a “night food court” which serves a range of burgers with potatoes, salad, nachos or polenta sticks. Very tasty and there is a nice atmosphere in the court with raised bleacher seating. I had some sort of burger with a layer of “bacon” which seemed to be made of some sort of tofu… The signs were all only in Swedish so I’m not entirely sure but I know it was vegan and nice.
The next day after filling up on breakfast we headed to Wayne’s coffee. Being in Sweden, everywhere did Oatly (a Swedish oat milk brand) so we had ice coffees. After some museuming we were in a bit of a Happy Cow dead zone so headed to Paradiset a natural supermarket with some good vegan options. The particular branch we went to had a Poke concession which had a tofu option. One of the dressings was mayo free and it was a good stop gap lunch.
For dinner we went to the famous Hermans. This is an all you can eat buffet located up on the hills by the river. It has recently gone fully vegan and there are up to 16 dishes every day in the buffet “boat”. Now first off, this place is expensive, even by Swedish standards. If you’re a student you get 50% off if you buy a drink so if you can do this, that would definitely be your best option. The food was…okay. We started with cake as we didn’t want to queue up twice and this was pretty delicious, one of the better vegan cakes I’ve had in recent memory. However, when it came to the buffet itself it was a little bit mediocre. The view was amazing, the cake great but I wouldn’t recommend the full price evening buffet.
On our final day, we visited one last place — HälsoCafet. This is a mostly raw food veggie/vegan cafe. I had the raw pizza which was delicious but most people seemed to be going for the make your own salad which caused great order envy! This cafe seemed a little bit more reasonably priced than others we went to and was on a great shopping street. I would recommend the Pen Store.
Stockholm is an excellent place for a long weekend, everything is quite central and there is a good range of food and coffee. I’m only sad I missed the Abba museum…
