Södermalm Bars & Nightlife

Café Nizza (Italian for French Riviera city Nice), serves Mediterranean food cooked with the best of Swedish ingredients. Standout dishes are the seabass with the classic Scandi flavors of cucumber and preserved fruit, or the simply sauteéd cavolo nero. While the food at this neighborhood joint is undeniably good, we love to pop in for a casual drink. The wine list changes almost daily so there's always something new from small producers to try—the best accompaniment to any glass of wine at Café Nizza is a basket of their freshly baked rye sourdough bread, slathered in their salty, homemade, butter.

A very casual bar in Stockholm's trendiest district, Södermalm, the outdoor terrace fills up early. The kitchen serves up all manner of Asian food from sushi and Vietnamese noodles to Thai street food, and the cocktails are particularly good. The lunch service can be a little slow—we recommend taking a seat at the outdoor bar for a drink and a few pieces of their excellent sushi, rather than committing to a full sit-down meal.

Two Swedes and an American founded Katarina Ölkafe—unsurprisingly, an American-inflected, Swedish deli serving up the best of both worlds. This small, cozy bar makes a mean pastrami sandwich (pickles are mandatory), with beers from Stockholm's best microbreweries on tap.

Hyper-seasonal, organic Swedish small plates and custom-created gin make Bar Agrikultur—located in hip Södermalm—a destination worth pushing past the tourists for. The food is inventive but still authentically Swedish and includes tapas-style dishes like wild boar salami and beets, watercress, and fried potatoes. Every aspect of this little bar has been carefully considered with sustainability in mind: The gin is a custom blend from local distiller Stockholm Bränneri and even the house champagne is bio-dynamic.Images courtesy of Niklas Nyman.