Pelikan Restaurant – Stockholm, Sweden

While we were staying with friends in Stockholm, we asked then to recommend a typically Swedish restaurant for dinner and they chose Pelikan. After a short ride on the Tunnelbana, we arrived outside an old builidng (one of the oldest in this part of town).

The dining room seemed rather dark inside, and it has brightened up a bit in the pictures thankfully so that you can see things. We were seated at a table near the window, which was good because it allowed us to read the menus and study the interior to some degree. The room had very high ceilings and the walls were adorned with old paintings. The restaurant was half full in a rather curious way – one side was completely full and the other side was completely empty. This is obviously the empty half:

The waiter presented us with a selection of breads and a short menu from which to select from. We were lucky enough to be seated next to a table of people who were just finishing their starters and shortly afterwards, just starting their main courses, so we got to see a selection of dishes before ordering.

Seeing “SOS” on the menu as a starter, I immediately had to choose that as a starter since I had read about it being very Swedish. SOS stands for Smör, Öst och Sill, which means Butter, Cheese and Herring. A lot of traditional Swedish food is all about marinated herring, and as Kerri pointed out in a previous post, I love it. In the end three of us chose SOS as a starter and it was only Kerri who decided to branch out, opting for crayfish.

Being on a roll with fish, I ordered pike perch for the main course, as did Jan. The girls didn’t go for a second round of fishy goodness – Kerri chose veal and Lucy chose cheese pie which looked a bit like a very deep quiche.

Starters arrived first of course:

The SOS was really good, particularly the herring marinated in the garlic and chive sauce. There were two other types of herring, marinated in a butter sauce with some dill on top, and a traditional marinade with red onion. One of the cheeses contained carraway seeds, which was really good too. It did seem odd to most of us eat a slice of cheese with marinated herring, but it did go together well. I figured it was just a bit like eating cream cheese with salmon. More on fish and cheese to come though. Kerri’s crayfish starter was good too, with cumin in the sauce.

After we had finished these, our main courses arrived:

As I promised, there would be some more cheese-on-fish action. This time it was camembert on grilled pike perch. The pike perch was delicious, as was the baked camembert if eaten in small amounts. But not really together and not really a whole camembert at once. The roasted until almost dried beetroot bits were good too. Strangely enough, both Jan and I left half of our cheese behind.

Kerri’s veal was delicious, meaty and pink inside. Again though, the aquavit butter came in rather too large a portion, but it did complement the veal rather well. Lucy’s cheese pie was good too. We were rather too full after that to order dessert, so after paying we wandered outside and after ten minutes or so, found ourselves in a bar on a boat. Which was expensive (a common problem in Swedish bars) but a brilliant place to while away the evening.

Pelikan
Blekingegatan 40
116 62 Stockholm
Sweden

http://www.pelikan.se/