On your right, look for the light stucco facade with tall rectangular windows and a recessed entrance marked by the restaurant name above the doorway.
Right here, at this entrance, you’re standing in one of Östermalm’s great food-story addresses. In nineteen fifty-eight, restaurateur Bengt Wedholm opened Östergök here in a space that had earlier been a beer café called Café Östergök. It caught on fast. By the early nineteen sixties, this was one of Stockholm’s fashionable tables, with only about fifty seats and a crowd that mixed style, design, and culture: fashion designer Gunilla Pontén, actor Catrin Westerlund, designer Astrid Sampe, critic Nils Petter Sundgren, and interior architect Jonas Tengbom.
And the menu? Proper Swedish comfort food, grilled beef, and game... rich, hearty, city-smart cooking. Then Wedholm spotted a new idea on a trip through southern France: a simple pizza place with a line out the door. He came home, hired an Italian pizza baker, and in December of nineteen sixty-eight expanded this address with Östergöks Pizzeria. Stockholm already had pizza in a few places, but Wedholm created a specially designed pizzeria here. That was a turning point.
In the spring of nineteen seventy-three, he added Östergöks Fisk, serving fish soup, herb-marinated scampi on skewers, charcoal-grilled halibut, and fresh Smögen shrimp. You can almost hear the plates landing. Since two thousand and five, the space has lived on as Lo Scudetto, and much of the nineteen fifties and sixties interior survived, even the wine bottles hanging from the ceiling.
This doorway tells the story of how Stockholm’s dining scene learned to dream bigger. When you’re ready, continue on for the next chapter.
