2004 Nobel menu (click to enlarge)
Travel Report
One place in Stockholm you’ll want to visit is City Hall and the StadshusKällaren Restaurant where every year the Nobel laureates end up having dinner in a group of about 1200. It’s a gorgeous place with a great atmosphere. What’s exceptionally cool about this place is the fact that you can go and have the Nobel dinner, complete with wine for around $250 or so. And still more interesting is the fact that if you order in advance you can have ANY Nobel dinner the place has ever served. The website of the restaurant outlines all the dinners here.
The wines won’t quite match since many are now unobtainable for the older meals. Before WWII meals are more expensive since they had more courses.
Apparently the Japanese flock to this place to have the recent 2002 Japanese Nobel prize winners (Masatoshi Koshiba and Koichi Tanaka) meal and this, I’m told by the manager is one of the most popular meals served.
While I didn’t have one of these meals and instead settled for Cognac (Grönstedts XO) at the bar (shown above) and a chat with the maitre d’ about the place. I did look at the current daily offering, the 2004 menu. I actually find it hard to believe that the chosen wines were the one picked for the original meal since they are not only uninteresting but from quite mediocre years especially the 1993 Bordeaux red. The Raymond Lafon Sauternes is always great even in off years, but I find it hard to believe that the red wine was worth any attention.
2004 Nobel China and flatware
Whatever the case I suppose most people would not notice. And this has to be a great gift dinner for someone. It might be fun, for example, to have the 1930 meal where Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize for Literature. That meal was as follows:
• Mock turtle soup
• Salmon trout with truffle, mushrooms, cock´s comb
• Fried turkey with artichokes, salad and gelé
• Ice-cream parfait with almonds and fruits
It should be noted that the “Mock Turtle soup” as listed on the website was real Turtle soup back in 1930. So the meal is mock authentic. I’m also certain the cooking style is so radically different that it would make no difference anyway. And we should protect those turtles. Unfortunately, none of the original wines are listed on the old menus, which would be quite interesting just to compare them with what they substitute.
Whatever the case, this is an excellent gimmick in a gorgeous setting.
related links:
Actual real experience described here
Nobel banquet menus from 1901 to present
More accurate and detailed menus here
I never thought much about what is behind the Nobel prize awards. Looks like quite the place.
Looks pretty tasty. Maybe I’ll get around to publishing that anti-gravity paper.
The Nobel meals look like quite an “interesting value proposition for the money.” 😉