Where to Eat in Stockholm: Melanders
Danny and I recently went to Copenhagen and Stockholm for nine days. The trip snuck up on us—well, it was sort of a surprise in the first place. Dan was invited to speak at a conference, so we whipped together a trip and a few weeks later, were on the redeye to Denmark. We threw in the detour to Stockholm just for fun.
Between planning the big things (flights, AirBNBs, dog babysitting) and giving into the demands of daily life (work, laundry), I did very little itinerary-making for the trip. Copenhagen was simpler: it's a smaller city with a pretty well-documented food scene as of late, so I could put together a list of to-dos and to-sees day to day. But for Stockholm, we decided to basically just wing it.
Luckily, we had some friends and friends-of-friends in the city who showed us the ropes and gave us lots of recommendations. On the first night in Stockholm, they welcomed us with a visit to Smaka På Stockholm (A Taste of Stockholm) for lots of beers and food. It was a smörgåsbord—heh—of all of the best restaurants in the city.
It was so much fun that we returned the next day for lunch. Both times, Melanders was the meal of choice. While lots of other cool spots dotted the huge festival, Melanders had their system down, so the wait for food was minimal, and they had selections that, to us, felt delightfully Swedish. Aside from Dan's got fish and chips, but in a port city like Stockholm, fish itself feels like an authentic bite of the city. We also ate viltköttbullar (Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries), inkokt lax (poached salmon with a dill-filled potato salad), and a tasty shrimp salad cocktail. Everything tasted bright, fresh, and served as a lovely accent as the Stockholm sun slowly set on the booming food fair.
If you're wondering where to eat in Stockholm and looking for an affordable spot to taste some super-Swedish foods, find a Melanders. There are lots of locations and it's a straightforward, quick, and pretension-free spot. I'll post some more recommendations from our trip soon. Hopefully, it helps you plan your trip to Stockholm (and you should definitely go to Stockholm) in a way more organized manner than I went about it. That said, being spontaneous in Sweden sure was fun.
