Bådan Café & Patisserîe in White Guide 2019

We are pleased that Bådan Café & Patisserîe is in this year´s edition of White Guide, which annually reviews Sweden´s restaurants and cafés.

“If the main purpose of visiting Artipelag is to have coffee? Yes! The new Pastry Chef at the art gallery, Annie Hesselstad, has raised the ambitions at the sweet counter to a level corresponding to everything else of beauty there is to see here. With the small advantage that everything is edible. Here you find pastries resembling desserts in season topped with or flavoured with wild-picked herbs or flowers, “fika” classics like carrot cake and brownies that have been jacked up several notches, classic buns, Danish pastries and their own take on croissants. The coffee is made by baristas at the coffee counter, roasted by Kersh Roasters in nearby Gustavsberg, the apple juice is local and the seating area in a fabulous archipelago environment – lovely.“

Boat taxi operators regularly bring passengers to Artipelag. They include e.g. Saltis Sjötaxi, which charges SEK 500 for a one-way journey from Saltsjöbaden.

The boat M/S Pihlen can take up to seven passangers and the trip takex approximately 15 minutes. Booking in advance is often required.

Read more >> (in Swedish only)

Creating cocktails is all about making tiny adjustments. You play it by ear. Consider what you might do differently. Adjust the ingredients. Until you finally get it spot-on.

This is roughly the process behind Artipelag’s new summer cocktail. Tim Good, the bartender behind it, based it on a cocktail he once tried. A nice cocktail, but not perfect. He felt there was room for improvement.

He tried bilberries in various guises for flavour and he created a version based on gin for an event, but he finally settled on a version based on vodka. But bilberries were always one ingredient. Essential, according to Tim Good.

– This cocktail is completely in tune with Artipelag’s environmental and locally grown ethos. You can pick bilberries here in the woods around the art gallery; it feels better than making something with, say, Spanish lime. It’s good for people who want to try to make this cocktail at home too: most of us have some bilberries at home in the freezer.

He sees several areas of use for the cocktail, it makes a wonderful aperitif, but perhaps most importantly it can be enjoyed on its own terms. In the setting only Artipelag can provide.

– In summertime we stay open for longer in the evenings, of course, and this cocktail is perfect if you want to sit on the terrace, admire the view and think about the meaning of life, he says.

It’s no coincidence that Tim Good mentions the terrace and the view. As one of the people who’s been involved in Artipelag’s entire journey, all six and a half years, he’s developed a deep affection for its unique location.

– There can’t be many workplaces where you can start the day with a cup of coffee outdoors with a view of the archipelago. I never get tired of it.

Nordic Bilberry Caipiroska
4 cl Absolut vodka
1 cl De Kuyper Blueberry
1,5 cl fresh lemon juice
1,5 cl syrup
ca 8-10 frozen bilberries

Method:

1. Pour lemon juice and syrup into a whisky glass with bilberries.
2. Fill the glass with crushed ice and stir. Pour in vodka and De Kuyper Blueberry. Stir and top with a little more ice.
3. Garnish with a sprig of bilberry.

European bilberries should not be confused with American and Canadian blueberries – they are two different members of the same family.

This is an article from the Artipelag yearly magazine produced in 2019 by Make Your Mark. Text: Mattias Dahlström. Photo: Johan Strindberg.

Annie Hesselstad is the new head pastry chef at Artipelag. Her desserts and pastries are a fusion of classic Swedish ‘fika’ and French elegance.

The moment Annie Hesselstad had waited and longed for came in January 2019. That was when she was finally put in charge of Artipelag’s pâtisserie and bakery. The position of head pastry chef suits the 29-year-old to a T.

– I want to develop Bådan into a café people visit on purpose. Many people drop in for coffee and cake as part of their visit to the art gallery, but I want Värmdö’s residents and visitors to see this as THE café to visit. It should be worth making the journey here for the pâtisserie and bakery alone!

If you ask what the future focus of Artipelag’s pâtisserie will be, Annie is a firm believer in the Swedish patisserie tradition. She favours a fusion of classic Swedish ‘fika’ and French elegance.

– I maintain that I’m classic with a twist. I’ve always loved the typically Swedish punsch rolls, almond tarts, etc. Punsch rolls are also perfect from a sustainability perspective as they’re made from leftover cake.

Sustainability is something that’s become increasingly important to Annie. Being a pastry chef involves a great deal of counting and measuring, to make exactly the right quantity of buns and pastries to satisfy the demand. Everything to ensure that as little as possible gets wasted.

– I hate throwing food away and we do our best to avoid it. We use small plates upstairs for the buffet, to make sure that people don’t take more food than they can eat. If I make pastries down here and get, say, yoghurt mousse over, we make it into a dessert that they can serve upstairs. A bread pudding that we make of leftover buns is also a permanent feature of the buffet.

Since February, she’s been working on what’s set to be the summer’s major pâtisserie event at Artipelag: the pastry she’s created for the major Fornasetti exhibition.

– It is a very Italian and zesty pastry. The dominant flavours are limoncello, pistachio and mascarpone. I’ve given it a rather graphic look, as a nod to the fact that Fornasetti worked extensively in black and white. I always try to work this way, to link flavour and design to the exhibition – people should come here and see the connection.

This is an article from the Artipelag yearly magazine produced in 2019 by Make Your Mark. Text: Mattias Dahlström. Photo: Johan Strindberg.

Fish from Baggensfjärden, a roof garden and honey from its own beehives. Artipelag’s kitchen uses produce sourced from nearby nature – and is very particular about enhancing flavours with the right beverages.

It’s a warm day and from the panoramic windows of the Artipelag Restaurant you can see the blue water of Baggensfjärden glittering in the sunshine. Oskar Moëll takes some of the wines that the restaurant serves out of the large wine cooler. He’s the restaurant manager and is responsible for all food and drink served in Artipelag Restaurant and Bådan Café & Pâtisserie, as well as at all events held here at the venue.

– We devote a great deal of energy to pairing the dishes on the menu with the right beverage. It’s all too easy to spoil an excellent dish with an unsuitable wine. You want to find that wow factor, when the dish tastes twice as good when you take a sip, says Oskar Moëll.

– There are some flavours that are more difficult to pair with the right beverage than others. It’s incredible difficult to find a good match for sweet woodruff or tomato, but we usually pull it off.

He started his career as a chef, but when he lost his enthusiasm for cooking, he stepped into the dining area instead. In the last decade, he’s worked as head sommelier at various restaurants and most recently as restaurant manager at Artipelag.

– What I like about working here is that we try to make food and drink with nature and not against it.

The minute Oskar Moëll says these words, a forest-inspired dish magically appears from the kitchen, consisting of wild mushrooms, berries, dried pine and creamed potatoes flavoured with mountain birch oil. Everything on the plate is locally sourced and organic.

– All the beverages we serve, except for the sparkling soft drinks, are also organic or even biodynamic. Obviously this has to do with the environment, but also the fact that eight per cent of the contents of a bottle of wine aren’t actually wine. They’re made up of acidity regulators, pesticides, colouring agents and similar. Organic or biodynamic wine feels completely different in your mouth. And your headache the next day is much kinder too, laughs Oskar Moëll.

At Artipelag, they only work with farmers and producers with whom they have a close relationship. Two or three times a year, for instance, they join forces with Värmdö Bryggeri to brew their own Artipelag beer.

– There’s some trial and error involved, but we usually succeed really well. We think the next flavour will be the return of an old favourite: spruce shoot. We’re just waiting for the spruce shoots to be perfect for flavouring beer.

This is an article from the Artipelag yearly magazine produced in 2019 by Make Your Mark. Text: Linus Fremin. Photo: Johan Strindberg.

The Insect Insight exhibition runs between June 29^th and September 1^st, 2019.

The Insect Insight exhibition showcases the beautiful but frightening world of insects. Before it opened, we visited artist Annika Liljedahl in her studio.

Most surfaces in Annika Liljedahl’s dark studio in Stockholm are covered in insects of various sizes. In one of the rooms, there’s a large hybrid insect with menacing red pipes; hundreds of little black flies appear to be crawling around on one of the tables; and what look like x-rays of large beetles are hanging over the studio’s large windows. This is where Annika creates the artworks that are set to feature in her Insect Insight exhibition at the Artbox this summer.

In a career as an artist and sculptor spanning over 50 years, Annika Liljedahl has exhibited in Sweden and internationally, including at Gallery K in Washington DC, USA, Länsmuseet Gävleborg in Gävle and the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg.

– When you’ve been working for as long as I have, you discover that you’ve been expressing the same concept all your life. It’s the fragile and delicate, the small and the vulnerable. That’s the story that I want to tell, even if I’m not always aware of this when I’m working. It runs like an invisible thread through my artistry, Annika explains, as she shows us around her studio.

In Insect Insight, she showcases artworks which use the insect as a metaphor for transformation and survival. In her sculptures, fragile silk fabric meets menacing pins and lovingly sewn edges are juxtaposed with crumpled wire – illustrating not only the beautiful and frightening aspects but also the fragility of the insect world.

– Insects are vulnerable little creatures right now, at the mercy of human interference. The newspapers are full of stories reporting their disappearance, due to toxins and pesticides. But they’re also tenacious and strong. The struggle for survival fascinates me, notes Annika Liljedahl.

Her interest in working with insects was awakened when she inherited her family’s summer cottage on the Swedish island of Öland. Every spring when the cottage was opened for the season, she had to sweep up heaps of dead insects from the furniture and floor. Over the years, she’s become more and more fascinated by the variety of species and the insects’ struggle for survival.

In the spring of 2016, she started to create the first artworks to feature in the exhibition, and she always planned to enhance the installation with lighting and audio. The idea to work with Lo Kristenson was born when Annika Liljedahl heard a documentary about her in the ‘Meet the Musician’ series on P2 in 2017.

For Lo Kristenson – who’d just been awarded her master’s degree in composition from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm – it was an exciting challenge to start from actual objects when creating the sounds, which consist of insect-like scratching and buzzing.

– I don’t often get the chance to create sound art. I’ve really enjoyed playing around to find the right sounds. I’ve tinkered around with string sounds and used glass to create the whine of mosquitoes, for example. I’ve also used a giant rainstick, a dried cactus, to create the sound of pincers. It’s been an extremely exciting experimental project.

This is an article from the Artipelag yearly magazine produced in 2019 by Make Your Mark. Text: Linus Fremin. Photo: Samuel Unéus.

On October 4^th and 5^th, 2019, we are happy to announce the return of American jazz vocalist and world famous artist Stacey Kent and saxophonist Jim Tomilson to Artipelag.

Together with Claes Cronas fantastic trio, Stacey and Jim will perform a repertoar of songs, proving the duo’s range of skills and why their crowd of listeners keeps on growing.

Read more and tickets >>

The summer of 2019 is filled with jazz and soul! Listen to sweet music together with our lovely buffet, served before the concerts. During five summer evenings we get to meet some of Sweden’s top vocalists and musicians.

This year’s artists include Jojje Wadenius (July 13^th), Jonas Kullhammar & Claes Janson (July 26^th), Sinne Eeg (August 3^rd), Rigmor Gustafsson (August 10^th) and Eric Gadd (August 17^th).

Read more and purchase tickets >>

Between April 26^th and June 16^th Artipelag exhibits 2019’s recipient of the Fredrik Roos Art Grant. This year’s scholar is danish artist Sara Nielsen Bonde.

The exhibition takes place both outside and inside Artipelag’s entrance.

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We are proud to be in the top three when the Stockholm locals review their museums.

This year we got second place in the categories ”Best Restaurant/Café” and ”Most pleasant environment”. We congratulate the winners Fotografiska and Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde and we will work hard to win in years ahead!

Read more about the survey here >> (in Swedish)