Delightful chuckles

Very few restaurant groups are making strides liked the newly renamed Brasseriegruppen. Exactly ten years ago, brothers Filip and Daniel Guven took the reigns at classic Stockholm eatery Prinsen and with that, laid the foundation for the PDF Brasserie Group. They’re now celebrating their ten-year anniversary with new openings as well as a relaunch of an old flagship name.

Located in Aberdeen’s old premises at

Grev Turegatan the restaurant Zink Grill has been reborn under the new name Gastrotek Zink. The restaurant, previously at Biblioteksgatan, managed to both be hit by a fire and be celebrated by critics during its nine years of existence, before it made way for what eventually became Eataly – at a price the brothers assure us they couldn’t turn down. But their longing for the restaurant was too strong and when the premises at Grev Turegatan became available the brothers decided it was time for a comeback.

Tengbom Arkitekter were enlisted to do the interiors and Zink Grill’s old trusted head chef Joni Germond was rehired to put together the menu. The basic concept with a charcoal grill as the centre of attention was kept but the menu is broader, and now flirts with cuisine from the Basque Country, Tuscany, Provence as well as the coast around San Francisco.

Is that broad enough for you? The question is, does it work? Surprisingly well, I’d say.

Gastrotek Zink keeps prices modest, which means you’re able to dig into a few of their medium–sized dishes without going broke. It’s actually in this category that the restaurant performs the best.

‘Medium-sized” dishes have become such a tiresome occurrence in Stockholm’s restaurant scene that it has almost become a four-letter word, and the same thing goes for the expression ‘food to be shared amongst the whole table’.

But here, the concept actually works extremely well. We dive into an eccentric array of dishes including broccolini with garlic dressing and pine nuts (80 kronor), a little gem salad with parmesan cheese (60 kronor) and grilled Portobello with chimichurri (95 kronor). All of these dishes were excellent in all their simplicity, and of good size for their price. This would be enough for two people, but we have a hard time staying away from their much-praised chips. All of this, and together with the complementary parmesan bread – surely made in heaven – makes for a solid base for a meal, and it’s enough that we decide to share only one of the mains from the night’s black board.

Our choice falls on a leg of lamb, cooked for the perfect length of time for the meat to fall off the bone. This comes served with a ‘mac & cheese’ that probably would have benefitted from a little more salt and pepper.

We round off the dinner with a chocolate fondant with blackberry ice-cream and Chambord-infused berries (65 kronor) and the last drops of the bottle of Mas Janeil that has served us well all through the meal. When the bill arrives, we chuckle delightedly – 1,500 kronor. It’s well worth it.