Sweden keeps its liquor licences in a national register and will not let you read it, so every room here had to be proved open the hard way, off its own dated files. Worth knowing before you set out in August: two of these five run summer hours nobody has told the listings about, and one of them opens four hours later than the internet says.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Pelikan
Sam Kjellberg drew this hall in 1904 for Stockholm's temperance backed drink monopoly, which opened it under the name Port Arthur. The Pelikan sign, carried since 1664 through three earlier addresses and left vacant for the thirty eight years after the old house came down in 1931, only moved onto this door in 1969. Anthony Bourdain filmed here for the Sweden episode of No Reservations, first shown on 24 April 2006, and the plate in front of him was the pork knuckle. Order that same fläsklägg, baked overnight until the meat gives up the bone, with mashed root vegetables and three mustards, and stand a frosted snaps next to it. Stockholm's city museum grades the building green, meaning particularly valuable, and nothing under that painted ceiling is a reconstruction.
a restaurant house of 1904; the Pelikan name only moved here in 1969 · daily 11.30am till 1am, weekday lunch 11.30 till 1.30 · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Kvarnen
The house went up on Tjärhovsgatan in 1906 and opened in 1908 as Grå Kvarn, one of the inns run by Stockholm's temperance owned drink company, on a licence carried across from Källaren Hamburg when that closed the same year. It only became Kvarnen around 1960, when the management washed the grey off the name after rationing ended. Its own history page admits what the frontage does not: the brothers who bought it in 1987 made it smart, drove the regulars out and shut it the following year, after which two Söder men bought it back and reopened without so much as a party. Hammarby supporters made it their second ground in the seventies and have never left, and the night of 21 October 2001 needed police outside the door. Take a beer standing in the beer hall and eat the pytt i panna. The brunch buffet is on its summer break until 22 August.
opened 1908 as Grå Kvarn, this name since about 1960, shut for a year in 1988 · SUMMER HOURS: Mon and Tue 4pm till 11pm, Wed and Thu till midnight, Fri till 3am, Sat noon till 3am, Sun noon till 11pm; terrace daily from 11am · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Den Gyldene Freden
A wine seller leased this plot in 1485, and in 1719 the vintner Petter Hellberg bought the run down stone houses on the corner for six thousand six hundred daler and a gilded goblet, so the building is older than the tavern in it. The opening year is given as 1722 and the house itself says the learned dispute it. Nor has it poured without stopping: it went dark in 1891 while a widow ran a temperance society in these rooms until 1895, and it locked up again on New Year's Eve 1985 for four years and thirty million kronor of rebuilding. Anders Zorn bought the place in 1919 over a plate of meatballs, left it to the Swedish Academy, which owns it still, and his will keeps those meatballs on the menu in perpetuity. So eat the köttbullar with cream sauce and lingonberries and drink the house snaps they bottle as Den Gyldene Snapsen. Bellman is on record visiting and name checking the cellar rather than holding court in it. The man with his own table here was Evert Taube.
the year is given as 1722 and disputed; dark 1891 to 1895 and again 1985 to 1989 · Mon to Thu noon till 11pm, Fri and Sat till midnight, SHUT SUNDAY; cashless · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Pharmarium
Stockholm's first apothecary was not on this square: it was the Hovapoteket, inside the royal palace, in the fourteen hundreds. What happened here is narrower and better. On 21 March 1575 the Dutch apothecary Anthonius Busenius was given leave to move part of the palace medicine store out and sell to the public at Stortorget, and that shop traded on this site until 1625 before moving away to become Apoteket Lejonet. The bar working the site now is modern and small, forty five seats, and it keeps the window places free for anyone who walks in off the cobbles. Take a stool at the solid green marble counter and have them mix you a cocktail. The bloodbath happened outside rather than in here, and anyone under eighteen is turned out at ten.
a modern bar on the site of the 1575 public apothecary · Mon and Tue 4pm till 11pm, Wed and Thu till midnight, Fri and Sat 3pm till 1am, Sun 5pm till 11pm · verified Aug 2026
- 5 · The Last Call
Riche
Erik Moberg opened Riche in 1893 with the Café Riche on the Boulevard des Italiens in mind, though the house it occupies was not finished until 1895, a two year contradiction its own reference works carry without resolving. The Wallenbergs, the Bonniers and the Sachs family pulled it out of trouble during the war and handed the running to Tore Wretman, who kept it until 1976 and made it the room where Ingmar Bergman and Greta Garbo were regulars. The city museum grades the whole block blue, its top mark, meaning exceptionally high cultural value. Order the toast Skagen, buttered bread under hand peeled prawns, dill and Kalix roe, and drink a glass of something in Lilla Baren where the records play and the paintings get hung. The house says toast Skagen was born in its kitchen and nobody outside the house has confirmed that to us. Through the summer nothing opens before five.
opened 1893, in a house finished 1895 · Mon and Tue 11.30am till midnight, Wed to Fri till 2am, Sat 11am till 2am, Sun noon till 10pm; BUT 13 Jul to 9 Aug it opens at 5pm and not before · verified Aug 2026