Kungsholmen Restaurant

Description:

• This is a restaurant with a theme, and the theme involves dining as theater, where celebrities and beautiful people pop in with regularity, and where seven different "food stations" are open to view around the perimeter of the restaurant. In addition to a parade of stylish and shapely blonds of both genders, all the members of rock group Depeche Mode arrived, with fanfare, on the night of our visit, adding even more drama to the firecracker decor of black and matador red. Food items emerge, steaming, from separate kitchens that management defines as "bars," each devoted separately to sushi, salads (six different meal-size choices), soups (our favorites included the bouillabaisse and the Thai chicken soup), bread (burgers, barbecued pork-based "pig sandwiches," pita stuffed with roasted lamb and goat cheese), bistro items (osso buco with risotto, seafood pasta), grilled items (shrimp with chili and lime, Moroccan-style lamb chops, steak with Béarnaise), or ice cream (try the strawberry milkshake with ginger).

  Expect a Swedish version of a large, raucous restaurant in Paris, replete with frissons of recognition associated with various entrances and exits, and a hip, attractive, and somewhat harried staff. If you're hungry and an insomniac, this restaurant is open later than most of the other places in Stockholm. Seating, especially around happy hour, is supplemented with tables set up on a floating platform anchored immediately offshore: Known as the Pontonen Restaurant, it's open daily from 5pm to 1am and it has its own (floating) kitchen and bar, serving main courses priced at 65SEK to 310SEK ($13-$62/£6.50-£31). It's a self-contained social entity all its own -- where clients seem to drink a lot, have a lot of fun, and remain more or less oblivious to the goings-on within its more stylish, and more trend-conscious, sibling.

• © Frommer's 2012

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Recommended 2010