Matbaren is Mathias Dahlgren’s ‘casual’ alternative to his world renowned ‘Matsalen’ fine dining restaurant, both located beside the Grand Hotel right in the heart of Stockholm. Arriving in Sweden that afternoon after a few hours of travel, we decided a full fine dining experience would be wasted on us and welcomed the chance to try the food of Sweden’s most famous chef in a more relaxed atmosphere and at a somewhat lower price.
While the restaurant has a few traditional seated tables for larger groups, the relaxed ethos of the restaurant is evidenced by the long steel food bar around the kitchen and the high tables and stools that line the sides of the restaurant.
Perched on one of the high tables, we sat down to little wooden trays and a bag of home baked crackers and before long were greeted by the waitress who explained the slightly unusual ordering system. Matbaren eschews the set courses of its fine dining sibling next door and offers ‘Tapas style’ ordering – your tray is lined with a menu containing around fifteen dishes and you order one, eat it and then decide what you fancy next. As we were not exactly starving, this approach was perfect – allowing us to sample the menu without overestimating our appetites.
Unlike tapas, however, the portions are fairly big and the menu is not particularly extensive – so four courses will probably be the limit for most people, as well as allowing you to try most things on the menu.
The first course we shared was a cocotte of ling – a cod like fish in a beautiful creamy sauce, served with sweet prawns and potatoes. The dish was full of flavour and Swedish character and is definitely recommended.
The other ‘first course’ we went for was the Cream of Nettle – surprisingly named as the nettle cream was probably one of the milder flavours on the plate. The cream was served in a bowl with white asparagus, morels, a poached egg and some caramelised onions. Simple, rustic and with good flavours.
With our first two courses we opted to add a bowl of new potatoes – a special menu item to celebrate the first harvest of the year. Perfectly cooked and served with lashings of butter.
At this point tapas ordering proved its worth – with me being able to take a second savoury course while L. held out for dessert. I opted for the chicken dish – it has been years since I had chicken in a restaurant, but I was interested to see how it would be prepared in a high end restaurant. The chicken itself was definitely the nicest I have had with a great texture. But the truffle sauce was very overpowering, to the point that it made us both a little queasy – but maybe we just don’t appreciate truffles… after that we won’t be rushing to try them again.
Another downer with this dish was the recurrence of the caramelized onions – they didn’t seem to sit perfectly with either dish they accompanied. And despite the tapas style sentiment, the menu is not particularly huge, so to see such a strongly flavoured element repeated was a bit disappointing.
The first dessert was a citrus sorbet – fresh, light, zesty flavours, a refreshing way to end a meal or to take a breather before another course. The second could not have been more different – heavy, creamy and best eaten immediately before heading home to bed. The chocolate brownie (bursting with melted chocolate) and toffee icecream was absolutely superb – sweet, smooth, crunchy, hot, cold and with a helping of sour cream to cut through the rich sweetness.
So if you are in Stockholm and looking for something that represents modern Sweden cuisine and provides a casual, yet elegant alternative to sit down fine dining – Matbaren is a great choice, albeit not the cheapest in town.
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Mathias Dahlgren Matbaren
We ordered three courses and two desserts plus five glasses of wine for around £150 – in retrospect not bad value for Sweden
Grand Hotel Stockholm
S. Blaiseholmshamnen 6
Stockholm, Sweden
Hello, I just discovered your blog via Cool Travel Guide.
It’s cool and hip and informative. I’m looking forward to reading more reviews!
I tried to book over two months prior to get into the main dinning room only to find they would NOT seat us there but instead in the casual bistro you wrote about and the food was just average! and over priced!
The claimed that the same team of chefs work at the Bistro side and that did not seem to work for us as the food was about a 6 at best out of 10. The food was seasoned a bit salty, the salmon dish which they recommended was farmed salmon that tasted like farmed fish not that great. I am a fisherman in CA and eat wild salmon I catch and at markets so I know my fish and their salmon was weak! The only good dish out of both our meals and we had a four course giving them the option to pick what they thought was the best dishes, was the duck. The duck dish was cooked perfectly and was a strong dish the rest was weak including desert.
I feel Mathias Dalgren tries to alienate foreign travelers and stick them into this bistro instead of the main dinning room. They claim you can only get into the main dinning room via a live phone reservation. They also claimed they tried to call me on my cell to verify my reservation which I have on 24/7 with international roaming and that was a lie! It was clear we wanted the main dinning room as we were dressed to impress, I booked it two months prior yet they said there was no way to get us in the main dinning room! This bistro side is dump! If you want good food in Stockholm go to F12 they were the best and we also tried Operakalleron, Paul Norbert as well and F12 is about a strong 9 out of 10. I have only given on 10 in my life and that is the French Laundry in CA with Thomas Keller and this Bistro is barely a 6, maybe more of a 5.5 out of 10!