Lyran

Upstairs or downstairs? It’s a matter of mood whether you choose to sit on the ground floor, with a bar feel to it and a view of the cooks’ activities in the kitchen, or downstairs in the more intimate basement space. Whichever you choose, you’ll need a heart of stone not to be seduced by this stronghold of spontaneity which, besides conveying through its service and ambience an atmosphere of relaxed cosiness, excels at creating vegetable dishes that have both attitude and umami depth. No menu here comes without a list of ingredients and their producers, crucial contributors to the evening’s selection. Rapeseed shoots and leek from Bokeslund Farm, fine beets and tomatoes from Bröderna Andersson, and red odontites from Lindegrens shine on the plates. The menu comes in three versions: green, with fish, or ‘mixed’ for omnivores. Wines are in the nature style and carefully chosen to work with Jörgen Lloyd’s equally natural flavour compositions. This year’s killer pairing is a dish of scallops in a frothy butter sauce with bergamot and capers, and a xarel-lo from Els Vinyerons whose fruity but slightly oxidised style and hint of bitterness at the end goes hand in hand with the judiciously used bergamot. Among the green dishes, a small appetiser of crispbread, fresh cheese, Ingrid Marie apples, nasturtiums and harissa cream stands out with flavours that don’t blush, and real heat. Umami gluttony reaches its peak in an open lasagna in which a thin sheet of pasta topped with peppery olive oil enfolds chanterelles and Slovenian truffle. Sea buckthorn sorbet, burnt white chocolate and liquorice makes a seemingly simple dessert, but it’s extraordinarily well balanced.

Published december 2019