House & Hotel Magazine likes the Fjällnäs, its Sweden’s oldest mountain hotel in an exclusive sanctuary. Easy to experience continual, dramatic changes of nature. We live with this unspoilt wilderness right on our doorstep during eight totally different seasons. The air is pure and whenever you want, you can quench your thirst with water from the clear mountain lake. When Fjällnäs’s first visitors arrived more than 130 years ago, they were attracted by the pure, unspoilt, beauty – and this is still the same today.
In 1882 Jonas Aslund, built Fjallnas, one of Sweden’s first mountain hotels. It soon became the wilderness retreat of choice for Sweden’s and Norway’s royal circle, but over the years sank into disrepair and neglect. Now, another entrepreneur, the former financier Lars Bertmar and his wife, Christina, have reinvented the resort for a new generation using a team of architects and talents that include the Iranian-born interior designer Shideh Shaygan. The result is a balance of rustic and luxury. Old folk-style buildings now have clean, modern interiors, and the lodge — an expansive wood barnlike building — looks like something out of a Wes Anderson film, with a menacing stuffed bear at the entrance, lots of old books in the library and a restaurant lined with windows that look out on the picture-perfect mountain lake rimmed with old crooked trees. The interiors — with details like Missoni towels, arrangements of vintage ceramic vases in the rooms, natural wood saunas at the spa — reflect the sensibility. It’s the ideal retreat to return to after the long hikes, dog sledding adventures or cross-country skiing trips at this end-of-the-world destination in the wild Swedish highlands.
Love this ecoluxury place.
#2 if you go to Stockholm: F12
The F12 – in walking distance from the central train station combines modern design, nouvelle cuisine, located in the Royal Academy of Arts building, and the room is a light and airy one with a very high ceiling. They serve top ingredients, great wines, two menu selections (5 or 9 course) for choice.
You want an eating experience in Stockholm go for it.
F12 is run by Danyel Couet, and has a Michelin star, tables are generously spaced and laid with white linen, and the room can accommodate 65 covers at any one sitting.
We ate from the set lunch menu, tartare of scallops was flavoured with wood sorrel, apple juice and garnished with blackened onion.
This was a quite pretty and refreshing dish, the scallops of good quality and the apple providing a little acidity to balance the scallop.
The wine list had global scope, with selections eg. 2008 Albarino from Martin Codax.
An in-between course was a duck liver bonbon with cherry, the cherry went well with the duck though I am less sure at what the salmiac really added.
The main course was sirloin of Swedish beef, in this case supplied from a cooperative of eleven farms near Stockholm. This was served with celeriac puree, oxtail and garnished with truffle from Gotland. The beef had good flavour,
Finally a vanilla brioche base with cream cheese sorbet, apple and bramble sorbet with vanilla skin a foam of arctic bramble and strawberry, with a little mountain salt added. This was an enjoyable end to the meal. Yummy.
Its worth it.
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