Stockholm may not come to mind when thinking of a culinary city in Europe. Cities like Paris and Barcelona would be a more obvious choice. After visiting Funkalistic I still wouldn’t call it the culinary capital of Europe but I do now know that the Swedish can cook…or at least some of them. May not be Michelin star quality, but very decent cooking.

The place looks stylish and in some weird way reminds me of a beach club. Perhaps this is because of the people that work an visit and not so much the decor, although the white and blue table tops do give off a summery vibe. Pretty strange feeling, knowing that outside it is rainy with temperatures around freezing.

On the night we visited, is wasn’t particularly busy. However, it sometimes did take some time for the waiters to notice we were done eating. Staff is friendly though and speak excellent English, as it seems everyone does in Stockholm. Although we were not exactly in the touristy city center, the menu had the dishes on it in English in addition to Swedish.

We skipped the starter, but we did receive some bread with butter. It was in one word delicious. I know it is just bread but even that can (and by some will) be messed up by it being too compact or dry. The salted butter made a nice addition. There was one bread (something that resembled a Swedish cracker) that had a somewhat unusually nice taste, but in the country that invented crackers, who am I to complain…

For main course I ordered the arctic char. A salmon-like fish that was steamed and came with cabbage, potatoes and a purée of dille. Where the fish itself was on the edge of being over cooked it was actually nice. It may sound surprised but I am normally not a fan of salmon and this was similar. The purée of dille was a little salty and probably because of that really nice. The cabbage that was underneath the fish also had some flavor, something not all restaurant manage to do (see my post about ‘Bij Lam & Yin’, which was nice except for the cabbage). The dish normally comes with a clam veloute but because of allergies I skipped that part if the dish. Although initially it looked like a lot of green blobs on the fish, the proportions of the ingredients was excellent. There was just enough if everything as in the end I only had some aioli left that came with the potatoes.

Then came dessert which for me was a gingerbread parfait with saffron (yes, saffron) ice cream. This to me sounded an bit unusual and that made me curious. The parfait has a little bit if sweetness with a bit of tang from the ginger, really like a frozen cookie. Only the real cookie that was on the bottom of it became so hard that it was a little difficult to eat. The ice cream really had something ‘herby’ or almost savory and was on top of some gingerbread crumbs with gave it some well-deserved crunch. Leave out the hard bottom of the parfait and it was right up there with some of the best desserts I have had over the last couple of months.

Now for the tricky bit, the value for money. The difficulty here is that Sweden is an expensive country to visit. Factor that in and the price of approx. EUR 35 for main course and dessert (incl. drinks) is fair. Would I recommend this place to anyone? Sure, why not, but only if you are in the area anyway.