The swedish chef Mathias Dahlgren has a small empire of restaurants in Stockholm with his name attached to it. There's the two-michelin stared "Matsalen"(The dining room), the one-michelin stared "Matbaren" (The food bar) and the event-styled "Matbordet" (The food table).

We wanted to have a nice lunch experience while in Stockholm and decided to try out "Matbaren". This is a rather "casual" restaurant in a modern-bistro style setting where the diner can order new dishes as he or she pleases throughout the meal.

The restaurant is located near the flagship restaurant "Matsalen" in the prestigious Grand Hôtel bottom level. The interior is casual and nordic with small wooden tables and quite cool wooden chairs that has been painted red. The emphasis is however on the actual "bar" in the middle of the room. The restaurant isn't called "the food bar" for nothing.

The servers are very friendly and helpfully explains that we can order as much or as little as we like, and when we've eaten one course we can decide to order more if we like to. This is a nice concept where we can get a feel for where we want to take the meal as we try new dishes (and how much more we can stomach :)

We decide to order the pork buns to start as we've heard so much good things about their version. The food arrives extremely fast which is obviously great for a lunch serving. The buns tastes delicious. The sauce is heavenly and we swear we could've eaten a ton of these.

Next up we order a lamb and grouper dish after each other. The dishes arrives just as quickly as the previous course. We're impressed at the speed they're able to handle the dishes. They surely got a good system setup (there's a lot of people here for lunch).

It's evident that there's great talent behind these dishes. They're bistro-style food made with excellence. This restaurant doesn't try to push the envelope, they simply want to create delicious dishes— and they succeed. Each dish is perfectly balanced. Simply really good food.

After trying these dishes we would be happy to keep going and trying even more on the menu— but sadly we need to keep some room in our stomachs for later. Matbordet sure is a great spot to check out for food that's comforting and delicious, you'll want to keep eating and eating here; and with the fun premise of ordering the next course after you've completed the previous one— make sure you enter with an empty stomach!