Pelikan

Meatballs and Merchants

3.5 of 5

Pelikan has been serving food in these Art Nouveau rooms since 1904, and its roots go back further. Back then the customers were cart drivers and merchants doing business in the neighborhood. Now it is everybody. That is how you know a place is a real one.

The menu is husmanskost, Swedish home cooking, and that means the handmade meatballs you came for, herring, cured salmon, calf liver, and pork with root vegetables. There is even a Grosshandlarmiddag, a merchant's dinner built on historical recipes, which is the sort of thing a chain restaurant could never fake. Finish with a Småland cheesecake or a rhubarb pie. The prices are not on the website, so I will not guess them. Expect a normal Stockholm bill, which means you will feel it a little.

It is open every day from half past eleven in the morning until one at night, with weekday lunch until half past one. Södermalm locals have kept it on Södermalms bästa restauranger lists for 2026. Go with someone who likes to eat slowly and order for the table. Skip the trend places for one night and sit under a high ceiling that has heard a century of arguments about whose turn it is to pay.

Order this: Handmade meatballs, Herring and cured salmon, Calf liver, Småland cheesecake or rhubarb pie
The damage: $$ (prices not listed on site)
Go: Any evening, with a table by the window or in the beer hall
Find it: Blekingegatan 40, 116 62 Stockholm