Tere!

Even though my travel is a budget trip (as repeatedly said), I don’t always eat foods from a supermarket. Since Stockholm is still expensive, and I didn’t stay there so long, I didn’t try many restaurants and cafes in Stockholm. However I will introduce a few restaurants and cafes, including some Swedish sweets in this article, so have a look!

---

Table of Contents

     1. Restaurant
          a. Hawaii Poke
          b. Le Kebab Odenplan
     2. Cafe
          a. Kaffeverket
          b. Gast Café
          c. Vete-Katten
     3. Swedish sweets and tea
          a. Dammsugare
          b. Princess cake
          c. Havreboll, pärlboll, chokladboll
          d. Bilar
          e. Garant
     ★Summary

---

1. Restaurant

In Stockholm, I went to only two restaurants. This is because; on the first day, I went to a gig, on the third day I had a flight back to Tallinn at night, and I didn’t have anything I specifically wanted to eat. (I’m talking about meals and savouries, not sweets.)

a. Hawaii Poke

First off, Hawaii Poke is a chain poke restaurant over Stockholm. Truth to be told, as I had been on a ketogenic diet since the end of February, and while travelling in Sweden I was taking a break from the diet, I wanted to eat some rice. Also because it was warm in Stockholm, I wanted to eat some raw vegetables. Therefore, I chose Hawaii Poke.

After wandering around the islands such as Djurgården, I went to a Hawaii Poke place in the mainland but close to Skeppsholmen.

I ordered Hula Sunrise. Because the rice was warm, in terms of rice Hawaii Poke’s bowl was better than the ones available in Tallinn, but overall I personally prefer the poke with shrimps and kimchi available in Tallinn. (The restaurant is called Poke Bowl.)

This Hawaii Poke restaurant is so small, and there were only a couple of seats. Perhaps their main business is take-away. I actually had an impression that there were more takeaways.

b. Le Kebab Odenplan

Before going to Sweden this time, I had a “goal” that was “I will eat kebab in Sweden!”. In Estonia, of course you can eat kebabs but always the selections are chicken, pork and vegetables. Yes, it’s Estonianised. (I mean, although pork is often eaten in Estonia, kebab was mainly developed in Islamic culture.)

But what I want is a beef kebab!!!

Then I found a kebab restaurant called Le Kebab Odenplan. Their rate in Google map is good, and Le Kebab Odenplan restaurant was close to the hostel, so I chose there. It was a pretty fancy restaurant. (Either it didn’t look like a regular kebab place/stand or they didn’t have regular kebab menus.)

The order style was; order first, and then take a seat. I arrived there at 6.00 pm on Saturday, so it was full of people. Due to this, it was difficult to find a seat for even one person.

I ordered a kebab wrap, but there are meal menus too. (I ordered just a kebab wrap.)

Once I ate it, it was much more different than I expected, and it was disappointing. Additionally, the meat’s texture was like minced meat. To be honest, I thought kebabs available at a kebab stand on the street would be tastier. My order cost 139 SEK (around €13) though. By the way, I really liked kebabs at the kebab stand on the street in Siegen, Germany…

Le Kebab Odenplan restaurant can be an option for those who want to eat fancy kebabs, but if you really want to enjoy the tastes, I wouldn’t recommend Le Kebab Odenplan restaurant.

2. Café

Whilst I wonder “what’s the point of café-hopping?”, “the taste of coffee is almost the same everywhere unless it’s really bad?”, I do like going to cafés. In Stockholm, I visited two cafés. One of the cafés was something I decided to go to right before going there. The other one is a café that I wanted to go to for a specific purpose.

a. Kaffeverket

I went to Kaffeverket for brunch when I arrived in Stockholm. I arrived in the centre of Stockholm at past 11.30 in the morning. I found one more cafe that looked good, but since Kaffeverket seemed to close earlier than the other cafe, I chose Kaffeverket so as to prevent me from regretting when I would have felt like going to Kaffeverket later. 

In Kaffeverket, there were lots of people, but it wasn’t too crowded. Kaffeverket is a small cafe, and yet there are some more seats in the inner part of Kaffeverket.

I ordered filter coffee and a tuna sandwich because the sandwich appeared to be spicy. However, the tuna sandwich was different from what I expected:

Huge.

This tuna sandwich was like an Asian fusion sandwich, and it cost around 130 SEK. (It’s approximately 13 EUR.) As for the coffee, I wanted them to serve a hotter one to me. It was a bit lukewarm for me.

In Kaffeverket, I could not find any sockets. Their Wi-Fi seemed to require a password. (Since I hate communicating with strangers a lot, I kept roaming on my phone in Kaffeverket, so I’m not still sure whether you can get the password even if you ask the clerk there.) The Wi-Fi’s password could not be seen even in a receipt either.

As the food portion is big, if you wish to go to Kaffeverket, you should go there for the purpose of brunch or lunch rather than breakfast, in my opinion. Also, it might not be good for working or studying unless you are sure that you can get Wi-Fi.

b. Gast Café

In the morning, on the final day in Stockholm, I went to Gast Café after checking out of the hostel. This is because I had breakfast at the hostel, and just wanted to have some coffee at a café.

Maybe because it was Sunday, when I arrived at the Gast Café at past 11.30 am, it was so crowded. Hence it was pretty hard to find a seat for myself, and I had to choose a stool around which there was no space to put my backpack regardless of the size of the backpack. I really felt that the disadvantage of a solo trip is that you cannot keep a seat before ordering…

Plus, the Gast Café seems popular simply as a café. It was a lovely café, so if you want to try café-hopping in Stockholm, you may want to include Gast in your list.

c. Vete-Katten

I went to Vete-Katten for the specific purpose which was

I wanted to try princess cake!!!

I found information that Vete-Katten is highly evaluated, and surely you can have princess cake. That’s why I decided to go there in advance.

Vete-Katten was also crowded, but luckily I was able to keep a seat first. But if your accommodation is close to Vete-Katten, you may consider a take away too. (At Vete, it’s said that there are lots of pickpockets so be careful.)

I’ll write more about princess cake later in this article.

3. Swedish sweets and tea

Although it was my fourth time visiting Sweden, I was a poor student at the first visit, and I went there only for the purposes of concerts, I didn’t research almost anything about Sweden beforehand every time I went there. However, I resumed learning Swedish on my own, through the contents in the textbook, I realised there are more Sweden-specific things.

One of the Swedish things is Swedish sweets. There should be more in Sweden given that you research further, but here I’m going to talk about only three sweets. I chose something you will (never I think) be able to obtain in Estonia.

a. Dammsugare

The first Swedish sweet that I picked up is dammsugare. At a confectionery, I tried to pronounce “Dammsugare”, trying to remember the pronunciation in the textbook, the clerk didn’t understand. (Or maybe I misremembered the pronunciation.) so I said “damm…su…gare”. He understood what I wanted. 😂

If you are curious, Google “dammsugare” online. You will see a bunch of pictures of hoovers. You may think

”What???”

This is because “Dammsugare” means “a hoover” in Swedish. At the confectionery that I went to (the name is Ritorno Konditori), they sell dammsugare named “Volta” which is a hoover brand.

It’s a chocolate sweet, and although it’s small, you will get satisfied as its texture is heavy.

It’s tasty though.

As dammsugare was available at supermarkets too, I bought one for my boyfriend who said “What is something Swedish that we can’t get in Estonia lol” before going to Sweden. However, I understand his point because we can get Swedish products such as coffee. I happened to know about dammsugare this time, and yet if I didn’t research like the previous trips in Sweden, or hadn’t bought a Swedish language textbook with Swedish culture, I wouldn’t know dammsugare even now.

b. Princess cake

This is the cake that I briefly mentioned above.

Princess cake is a Swedish cake. The sponge cake has cream inside, and it’s covered with a light green marzipan. You can buy a whole princess cake or just a piece of the princess cake.

It tasted lighter than I thought. You can get the princess cake at a supermarket too, but of course it’s displayed at a cake corner, not at the counter for regular sweets.

FYI: the princess cake is suitable for black tea!

c. Havreboll, pärlboll, chokladboll

The last sweets are ball sweets. They are called havreboll, pärlboll as well as chokladboll (boll means a ball in Swedish), so I personally call them “ball sweets”. It seems there are basically those three types, and yet all those three are almost the same, containing oatmeal. Their size is like a mud ball that we used to make when we were kids at a nursery school.

Havreboll looks whitey, and contains coconuts.

Pärlboll doesn’t contain coconuts.

Chokladboll seems the most common and ordinary one among these three. In addition to oatmeal and coconuts, chokladboll’s another ingredient is cocoa powder, so it tastes literally like chocolate as in its name. Beside chokladboll is the best among these three types in my opinion…

You can for sure buy those balls at a green-coloured supermarket called Coop!

d. Bilar

Bilar means “cars (indefinite)” in Swedish, and it’s a gummy sweet. Since each gummy shape is like a car, it’s called “bilar”.

I bought a bag of bilar before going to Liseberg in case my friend and I would get a bit hungry there and could share bilar, but we didn’t eat at all, so I brought it back to Estonia and it turned into a souvenir for my workplace. 😂

Bilar has two types: normal one and sour one.The normal one didn’t look tasty, so I bought the sour one, which was the right decision.

You can buy bilar anywhere in Sweden.

e. Garant

Garant is a Swedish food brand. As far as I know, based on my activities in Sweden, in Gothenburg, I found their tea series only in one supermarket called Hemköp.

What I bought were

• Camomile, lemon balm and lavender
• Mint and chocolate
• Earl grey
• Black tea with rhubarb and vanilla flavour

For my boyfriend as a souvenir (as a birthday gift), I bought camomile, lemon balm and lavender tea. (It’s because he sometimes works a lot to compensate for a no-work day.)

As of now, writing this chapter, it’s already summer, so I haven’t tried all the flavours but mint chocolate that I tried while staying at a hostel in Gothenburg. The mint chocolate one didn’t have strong flavours, but it was extraordinary and changed my mood.

Hemköp where you can buy Garant’s tea series in Gothenburg I know is only here:

★Summary

The restaurants and cafés above that I went to were for the purpose of something Swedish or something properly unavailable in Estonia. There are many many more in Stockholm of course. It might be fun to find one on the map too. (I personally want to try a meatball restaurant that I found in Google maps. Also I want to find a better kebab place.)

As for the chokladboll mentioned at the end of this article, you can Google some recipes so why don’t you try to make them on your own if you’re interested in them? The ingredients are nothing hard to find, and if what a Swedish YouTuber said is correct, people make it at home in Sweden.

Enjoy tasty and sweet Stockholm.

Aitäh! 🙂