Paris has its famous railway station restaurant, “Le Train Bleu”, its neo-baroque interior invoking the grandeur of a palace. In Stockholm, there is also a railway restaurant, unique in its own way and bearing absolutely no resemblance to the famous French restaurant. The Stockholm Eastern Railway Station from 1932 was built in the Functionalism Style, contrary to the embellishments of La Belle Époque Paris, simplicity and function defined architecture of the 1930s.

You will find the restaurant virtually unchanged since it opened. Well, there was a glass partition wall added in the 1950s when permission to serve wine required the restaurant to be divided into a “dry” and a “wet zone”. Today you may order your wine or beer on whichever side of the partition you find yourself. The furniture still consists of the original tables and chairs that were supplied by the department store NK.

The kitchen has stayed faithful to Swedish home cooking serving the traditional dishes my grandmother would prepare. Lots of butter and cream and strict vegetarians will have little or no choice. But please do come now. No one knows for how long this rare and hidden gem will be around. The rent was recently increased and the owners are struggling to make ends meet. We thank them for having declined offers from Starbucks and other enterprises that would effectively put an end to an 80-year-old tradition. While “Le Train Bleu” was declared a cultural monument in 1972, no similar protection has been given to Järnvägsrestaurangen.