Krakas Krog

For a brief moment, almost every night, Ulrika Karlsson steps out of the building that houses her restaurant, into the cool summer evening. She goes to where the main road bends, opposite Kräklingbo Church, and waits. Suddenly a car appears. Ulrika waves – it’s her husband and children driving past. They’ve been to Visby, or somewhere else – on this particular day they’ve been skateboarding. This small act says so much about Ulrika Karlsson. She’s gone a few minutes – where’s Ulrika? Something’s missing. Except for that brief moment when she steps outside to wave at her family, Ulrika is Sweden’s most present restaurateur. Not just physically. Her soul permeates the whole experience of dining at Krakas. She’s not just there in the smallest pea shoot and at every table. She’s there for us. Like a pastoral healer with her herbs and wine, elixirs for weathered hearts, she remembers where we sat last time, tells us a little anecdote like the one above. So deeply personal and yet so unpushy. Even though Krakas has been at the vanguard of the green, locally grown gastronomy for more than a decade, it continues to develop – no small feat now that every classy cook snips shoots and rummages for roots in a chlorophyll frenzy. After a few snacks in the garden we settle at our table, and promptly get a cream of smoked, sliced cod roe that we spread on spelt bread and top with sea purslane, a touch of bitterness from pickled rowanberries and a touch of anise from bronze fennel. Paired with a riesling from Kremstal which has been fully oxidised in clay pots, this is a complex flavour bomb that’s both fishy and fresh, marine and autumnal, smoky and sublime. Next is a rugged, modern dish – beans with nettles and unripe juniper berries. At first we think it’s the nettles that give that tickling feeling of Sichuan pepper, but it’s the juniper berries. Brining has removed the harshest bitterness, leaving a spicy, sticky saltiness, not unlike capers, and the Chinese pepper. For their part, the nettles – picked late in the season – lean towards the oysterish. To go with this remarkable dish that takes new strides in green gastronomy, Ulrika pulls out a classic burgundy, demonstrating the wine’s broad palette and tolerance. A whole roasted quail, rubbed with black fermented wild onion, is next. Its head next to it on the plate – decapitated. Behind the tiny eye is the pâté-like brain. It, and the little carcass that we tear to bits with our bare hands, are washed down with greedy gulps of upper-echelon brunello. Besides being one of Sweden’s most amiable restaurateurs and a pioneer of green gastronomy, Ulrika is also one of the country’s surest sommeliers. Which makes one holy trinity.

Published december 2019