Fresh & Clean

The little stretch of restaurants on Pontonjärgatan on Kungsholmen has seen several newcomers recently and, next door to Sthlm Tapas, Nagg has now taken over the old premises of Göken, as a new entrepreneur gives the grocery store on the corner of Baltzar von Platens Gata a much-needed facelift.

Nagg has a sort of laid-back fine dining profile; it’s somewhere between a casual local and a refined restaurant with ambitions. In tune with the current culinary trends, the owner and head chef Susanne Torssell (who previously ran Gamla Orangeriet at the Bergianska gardens) wants to focus on Swedish ingredients and seasonal cooking. The menu changes, at least partly, every week.

On the Sunday evening of our visit, Nagg is almost full; the locals seem happy to have a fresh face in the neigbourhood. The dining room has been given a welcome update; it’s sober and minimalistic, but the acoustics are not the best. On this particular evening, Nagg is not a lively local; rather, its diners sit quietly conversing, and it seems like every little sound of a fork hitting a plate or a child exclaiming something enthusiastic is multiplied.

The menu is refreshingly short and sweet. Only two starters, three mains and a handful of desserts are offered. Today’s starters are a veal meatball with crispy potatoes, served with wine-cooked onions and a creamy cucumber and white cabbage salad (105 kronor), and asparagus with a tomato vinaigrette, Ekerö salad and fried croutons with herbs (105 kronor). Nagg’s ambition is to let the ingredients speak for themselves, and the fresh, uncomplicated dishes achieve that admirably. The same goes for our mains, a juicy, fried char (190 kronor) and pork cheek with a potato terrine, caramel-cooked apples and alder smoked pork belly (205 kronor). A fun detail is that the kitchen never puts anything on the plate that can’t be eaten; so, it’s fine to eat both the skin on the fish (it tastes nice, too) and the skin of the dried oranges that are served with one of our desserts, a very fresh and not-too-sweet grapefruit mousse with lemon and szechuan peppar ice cream. Our other dessert continues along the same clean lines; a chocolate cookie with chocolate mousse and pistachio ice cream (both 75 kronor).

Nagg is about clean, fresh and mild tastes, and even if we leave longing for a bit more guts, it does raise the bar on Pontonjärgatan quite significantly.