On your right, this corner once held one of Östermalm’s great old dining rooms... Östermalmskällaren. It started in December of eighteen oh three, when the wine steward Carl Petter Lidberg opened Ladugårdslandskällaren inside a low eighteenth-century house owned by Widow Wennerström. An ad promised “breakfasts and good wines” in endless supply, at prices as fair as a wholesale tavern. That is such a Stockholm flex.
For a few years, from eighteen sixty-seven to eighteen seventy-one, the restaurant dressed itself up as Restaurant du Nord. But the bigger identity shift came in eighteen eighty-five, when Ladugårdslandet changed its name to Östermalm... and the restaurant had to follow. Regulars hated the change. They kept calling it Femman, “Number Five,” after Storgatan five. Their favorite host, Pelle på Femman, was really August Emil Petersson, and he ran the place from eighteen ninety-five to nineteen seventeen.
Then Sveriges Allmänna Restaurangaktiebolag, known as S-A-R-A, took over, renovated the rooms, and finally swapped gaslight for electric light. By the nineteen fifties, demolition crews closed in. Writer Beppe Wolgers begged, “Let us keep Östermalmskällaren!” But on New Year’s Eve, nineteen fifty-seven, the staff served their final night in nineteenth-century costume while photographer Lennart af Petersens captured it all. Then the whole block came down, and architect Anders Tengbom’s modern office complex rose here instead.
That gives this address the bittersweet flavor of a last dinner and a final toast. When you’re ready, continue on... and if you’re thinking of stopping nearby, the venue on your right generally keeps Monday-through-Saturday hours, closes Sunday, and leans expensive.
