This grand old Italian lady - La Vecchia Signora - was without doubt the highlight of my most recent visit to Stockholm. A small place on Söder is where you'll find probably one of the absolute best Italian restaurants in the entire city. It's a small place, a few tables and a bar, and it has this warm and cozy living-room feeling just walking in. We were immediately greeted and shown to a candle-lit corner table in the back of the restaurant near the windows by the street with a perfect view over both the bar and some of the kitchen. I had been looking on the menu on their website ahead of coming here and I noticed that they had changed the menu completely and the waitress sead they changed it only about two days ago. So it was back to the culinary drawing table and I found so many great dishes that I wanted to sample. Unfortunately, one in our company isn't perhaps the most culinary interested person and was quite dissapointed with the available dishes, but his sullen attitude didn't affect me the slightest. Instead, I started out with hazelnut crusted and deepfried wild schrimp with lemon. Simplistic yet so amazingly delicious. Crispy on the outside and still moist and translucent shrimp on the inside. My wife enjoyed an equally excellent starter of Piedmontese steak tartar, lemon, garlic, olive oil, and parmesan. For main I settled for a panfried venison tenderloin, seared duck liver, sweet and sour red cabbage, and autumn truffle. Oh my gawd this was so amazing. Meat cooked absolutely perfect, crispy outside on the duck liver and creamy center and the amount of truffle on the plate just had me salivating. To this I had a glass of red wine where the choice was entirely up to the waitress. She served me a Seccal Valpolicella Ripasso from 2015 that was a match made in heaven. My wife enjoyed a pasta dish of wild boar stracotto, red wine, tomato, pancetta, and ceps. For dessert I had apple doughnuts and caramelized apple served with hazelnut ice cream, while my wife enjoyed an excellent buttermilk pannacotta, plums, caramel sauce, and roasted white chocolate.
All in all, this was an amazing dining experience with friendly and attentive staff with just the exactly right amount of personal touch. It feels like a genuine Italian place with excellent food to boot and I can't wait to come back for another tasting. Addio e alla ricerca! read more