Stefan Ekengren’s new bakery-café is built around soft and slightly sweet breads, Swedish sandwich culture—and warm sauces.
In our interview, Ekengren is quick to frame EKEN as a return to everyday Swedish bread and baking, but with a pointed edit. “We simply craved a café with good, traditional breads,” he says. That means Swedish, almost old-fashioned classics: tekaka, soft, slightly sweet wheat rounds; kavring, the dark sweet rye bread many Swedes grew up with; and limpa, aromatic rye loaves often scented with caraway and fennel. As well as less of what has come to dominate modern bakeries: hard crusts and sourdough as default. The pastries stay close to the classics, too.
One signature is a tekaka sandwich topped with fried egg and Swedish falukorv, the mild smoked sausage that’s a staple of Swedish home cooking. “We want this to be the very best egg-and-falukorv sandwich out there,” Ekengren says, “created with house-made falukorv and finished with a warm, foamed mustard broth.” Another example is a shrimp sandwich, also on tekaka, with coarsely chopped shrimp mixed with a Rhode Island-style sauce, crowned with even more shrimp and a soft-boiled egg—and served with a shrimp-sauce foam designed to be mopped up with bread at the end.
This whole “warm sauce with a sandwich” idea is deliberate. Ekengren likes the way it makes the meal feel more dynamic—and more Swedish, in its own blunt, generous way. “We’re not doing smørrebrød here,” he says with a laugh. “What we do is a bit more brutal.” In practice, that means café food that’s cooked, assembled, and treated like a dish. Bread should also be “seasoned” like a dish, Ekengren points out, with flavors pushed with a chef’s sensibility.
Beyond sandwiches, on offer is a more flexible format Ekengren calls “smörgåsmat”. These smaller plates are designed to be assembled with bread, cultured butter, cheese, pickled herring, cured salmon, and liver pâté—a sort of miniature, everyday smörgåsbord built around whatever guests feel like eating. This points to one of the most important reference points, which is social, not just culinary. “When I was growing up, I used to hang out at a now closed beer café in Stockholm,” Ekengren remembers as he notes how these old beer cafés were reminiscent of the café culture that is very much alive in cities like Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. Places where savory café food sits naturally alongside coffee and baking, and where an ice-cold lager or a glass of wine can be part of the same everyday rhythm. “I’m very inspired by the atmosphere of these old beer cafés. There’s room to reinvent that in Stockholm—and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
In EKEN’s case, one of the clearest expressions of that mood is actually liquid: the café’s own punsch. Not to be confused with English punch, punsch is the Swedish spiced liqueur built around arrack, with deep roots in Swedish drinking culture. Its history dates back to the 18th century and, as Ekengren points out, “there used to be a special punsch for various guilds and activities.” All the way from circus punsch to automobile punsch. “Consequently, we decided to create our very own signature ‘Bagarpunsch’ (baker’s punsch), made with delicious cardamom and vanilla flavors.”
What the future holds for EKEN remains to be seen. But on opening day, Ekengren says the response has been steady, with a constant flow of curious guests. “So far, it’s been amazing.”
