Bar Nacka

A Pizza Shop Becomes a Wine Bar: The Story Södermalm Keeps Telling

There is a recurring pattern in Stockholm's bar scene: a room that starts as one thing quietly becomes something more considered. Södermannagatan 45 follows that logic. The address was a pizza spot. Now it houses Bar Nacka, a wine bar that in 2025 ranked both #1 and #2 on Star Wine List — an unusual double-billing that reflects how quickly a well-executed programme can reorient a space's identity in this city.

Södermalm has long operated as the borough where Stockholm's food and drink scene tests ideas before they migrate north. The neighbourhood runs on neighbourhood bars that take their drink programmes seriously, a format with roots in the kind of places that treat a glass of wine as a statement rather than a formality. Bar Nacka fits that tradition, but the credentials behind it push it into a smaller peer group: places where the person choosing the wines has spent years inside serious institutions, not just assembled a list from a distributor catalogue.

The Cultural Weight of the Sommelier-Led Bar

In Sweden, the sommelier-led wine bar occupies a specific cultural position. Systembolaget's monopoly over off-premise alcohol sales has, counterintuitively, sharpened on-premise wine culture: when consumers cannot browse a competitive retail market, the bar or restaurant with a knowledgeable guide becomes the primary site of discovery. A sommelier who has worked at the Grand Hôtel — Stockholm's benchmark formal dining address , carries institutional credibility that translates directly into guest trust. Anton Hansson has that background, extended by years in New York, a city where the sommelier's role shifted dramatically in the 2010s from service function to editorial voice.

The phrase that keeps circulating around Bar Nacka , that Hansson has 'done a Babette' , is borrowed from Isak Dinesen's story of a French chef who deploys her skills in an unlikely provincial setting. It is a useful frame. The gesture here is less about sacrifice and more about deliberate re-contextualisation: serious wine knowledge applied in a setting without the formality that usually accompanies it. That combination , institutional rigour, casual room , sits at the productive edge of where Stockholm's bar culture is moving.

Södermalm's Bar Ecosystem and Where Bar Nacka Sits

Stockholm's bar scene has been sorting itself into recognisable tiers over the past decade. At one end, there are high-concept cocktail programmes built around technique and ingredient provenance. Tjoget and Lucy's Flower Shop represent that approach, each with programmes that have drawn sustained editorial attention. Röda Huset and A Bar Called Gemma occupy adjacent territory with their own distinct orientations. Bar Nacka arrives into this ecosystem as something more specifically focused: a wine bar where the list, not the cocktail programme or the kitchen, is the primary argument.

That focus matters because the wine bar format demands a different kind of credibility than the cocktail bar. The cocktail bar can distinguish itself through technique, through house-made ingredients, through the theatre of preparation. The wine bar has to distinguish itself through curation, through the sommelier's ability to find bottles that the guest would not have found alone, and through a selection that rewards return visits with genuine depth. Two separate Star Wine List rankings in the same year suggests Bar Nacka is delivering on that promise at a level that the broader Swedish wine bar circuit recognises.

For comparison across the country, Bageriet Mat & Bar in Visby and Bar Robusta in Gothenburg represent the regional spread of Sweden's serious bar culture, each operating with its own local logic. Internationally, the sommelier-led neighbourhood wine bar format has parallels in places like Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu, where a tight, expert-led programme in an unexpected setting has built a loyal following. The format works when the curation is honest and the room is welcoming enough to absorb the expertise without making it feel like a test.

Planning Your Visit

Bar Nacka sits at Södermannagatan 45 in Södermalm, reachable by metro to Medborgarplatsen or Skanstull, depending on which end of the street you prefer to approach from. The venue's transformation from pizza spot means the room retains a certain informality , this is not a destination that announces itself with a grand entrance. Given the 2025 Star Wine List recognition, the bar has been drawing attention beyond its immediate neighbourhood, and securing a table on weekend evenings requires planning ahead. Hours, booking method, and current pricing are leading confirmed directly, as operational details for a relatively new programme can shift. What does not shift is the underlying argument: a sommelier with serious institutional formation, a room without pretension, and a wine list that has twice earned ranking-level recognition in the same calendar year.

For broader planning around Stockholm's food and drink scene, EP Club maintains full guides to Stockholm restaurants, Stockholm hotels, Stockholm bars, Stockholm wineries, and Stockholm experiences.