Vete-Katten

The Wheat Cat

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Vete-Katten opened in 1928 on Kungsgatan, founded by Ester Nordhammar as a pastry shop, bakery and chocolate maker. The name means the wheat cat, a pun nobody has ruined by explaining. The place used to be staffed entirely by women, front and back, which was unusual then and tells you who built it.

Ownership passed to Agneta and Östen Brolin in 1979, then to master pastry chef Johan Sandelin in 2012. It is a coffee and pastry institution with traditional Swedish cakes, and the signature is the princess cake, the green marzipan dome that every Swede grew up eyeing at birthdays. It has branches around Stockholm, but this is the original address, open almost every day since the beginning. They even published a recipe book of their jams, breads and pastries in 2020 to 2021, which is the move of a place that is confident.

Go on a weekday afternoon, take a seat, and order the princess cake with a coffee. That is a fika, a Swedish daily ritual, and this is the shop where the city learned it. It is not a trendy third wave coffee bar. It is where you taste what baking meant here before there was a hashtag for it.

Order this: Princess cake, Coffee, Any traditional Swedish pastry in the case
The damage: $ to $$
Go: Weekday afternoon, for fika
Find it: Kungsgatan 55, 111 22 Stockholm