

Hampus Thunholm's ingredient-first philosophy defines Röda Huset Stockholm, where Swedish terroir transforms into award-winning cocktails featuring seasonal produce from local farms. This World's 50 Best Bars honoree captures Sweden's cultural essence through innovative mixology.

A Staircase That Changes the Register
On Malmskillnadsgatan, a mid-city street that sits between Stockholm's commercial core and its older residential grain, Röda Huset occupies a building that gives little away from the outside. The ground-floor restaurant and walk-in bar announce themselves through noise and movement — a lively room where bartenders are in plain view and the drinks arrive without ceremony. It reads, at first pass, like a confident neighbourhood bar. What changes the experience is the spiral staircase at the back, and the 18-seat room it leads to.
That upstairs space is where Röda Huset's cocktail programme operates at full depth. Head bartenders Hanna Oscarsson and Erik Andersson run a format called The Scandinavian Cocktail Experience: a curated tasting menu built around Nordic ingredients, shifting seasons, and the kind of sourcing logic more commonly associated with restaurants at the fine-dining tier. The room's capacity is the first signal that this is not a volume operation. At 18 seats, the ratio of bartender attention to guest is closer to an omakase counter than a conventional cocktail bar.
What the Fäviken Years Actually Produced
The craft tradition at Röda Huset connects directly to the Nordic culinary movement that reshaped how the region's chefs and bartenders think about ingredients. Founder Hampus Thunholm's time working with Magnus Nilsson at Fäviken — the remote Jämtland restaurant that became one of the most discussed fine-dining projects of its era before closing in 2019 , was not decorative biography. Fäviken's entire operating premise was extreme locality and seasonal necessity: ingredients sourced within a narrow radius, preservation techniques drawn from pre-industrial Swedish practice, and a hospitality philosophy that treated every element of a meal as carrying meaning. For a bartender in that environment, the lesson was not cocktail-specific; it was about what happens when you treat a drink with the same rigour a serious kitchen applies to a dish.
That formation now shows in how Röda Huset sources and constructs its drinks. The ground-floor bar offers a preview: Plums From Dreyer In Höör pairs sweet-sour plums rested with vodka and eau-de-vie, while Raspberries & Whey combines whey flavoured with raspberries and tequila. These are not novelty constructions. They reflect a programme where fermentation, maceration, and the sourcing of a specific regional ingredient are the actual method, not a garnish applied after the fact.
Where Stockholm's Bar Scene Has Arrived
Stockholm's cocktail bars have moved through several phases over the past fifteen years. The city once lagged behind London, New York, and Copenhagen in programme depth; it now operates a small but competitive tier of bars with genuine international recognition. Röda Huset sits in that bracket alongside peers including Tjoget, which built its reputation on an encyclopaedic spirits list and serious food pairing, and Pharmarium, which works the historical-apothecary angle in Gamla Stan. Lucy's Flower Shop and A Bar Called Gemma occupy different registers , lower-key, more casual , but together they map out a city bar scene that now has range across formats and price points.
What separates Röda Huset from most of that peer group is the degree to which its programme is structured around a culinary logic rather than a spirits logic. Most cocktail bars, even serious ones, organise their thinking around categories of spirits, classic templates, or house techniques. Röda Huset organises around ingredients and seasons first, which is a different framework and produces different results. It places the bar in a global conversation about where the cocktail programme as a format is heading , a conversation in which bars like Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu, Jewel of the South in New Orleans, and Julep in Houston are all, in different ways, participants.
The Recognition Record
The bar's trajectory on the World's 50 Best Bars list is worth reading carefully, because it tells you something about the pace of the programme's development. Röda Huset ranked 31st in 2023, dropped to 45th in 2024, and appeared at 78th in the Top 500 Bars ranking in 2025. Ranking fluctuations of this kind in the 50 Best system are rarely direct indicators of quality change , the voting methodology, jury composition, and the expanding pool of eligible venues all affect year-to-year movement. What the record does confirm is sustained international recognition across three consecutive years since opening in November 2021, which, for a bar that opened with an 18-seat format in a city that was not previously a priority destination for cocktail tourism, is a significant achievement. The Google rating sits at 4.2 across 476 reviews, which for a bar operating a tasting-menu format at this price tier is a reasonably reliable signal of consistent delivery.
Two Floors, One Programme
The two-level format deserves attention because it is not simply a VIP-room arrangement. The ground floor serves a genuine function: it is an accessible, walk-in space where the bar's ingredient-led philosophy is present in every drink, but without the structured tasting format and the booking requirements of the upstairs room. For a visitor who cannot secure a seat at the cocktail bar, the ground floor is not a consolation prize. The drinks there are constructed to the same sourcing standards; the difference is format, not quality tier. This split structure allows Röda Huset to operate with inclusivity at street level while maintaining the integrity of the full experience upstairs , a balance that is harder to achieve than it sounds.
Planning a Visit
Röda Huset is located at Malmskillnadsgatan 9 in central Stockholm, accessible from Hötorget or Östermalmstorg metro stations. The bar opens Wednesday and Monday from 16:00, extends to 01:00 on Thursdays, and runs from 15:00 to 01:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. The bar is closed on Sundays. For the upstairs cocktail bar and The Scandinavian Cocktail Experience tasting menu, advance booking is the only reliable route , the 18-seat capacity means walk-in availability at that level is limited. The ground floor operates on a walk-in basis and functions as a practical option for those who want to engage with the drinks programme without a reservation. For context on what else Stockholm offers across dining and hospitality, see our full Stockholm bars guide, full Stockholm restaurants guide, full Stockholm hotels guide, full Stockholm wineries guide, and full Stockholm experiences guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What drink is Röda Huset famous for?
- Röda Huset is most closely associated with its ingredient-led Nordic cocktails rather than a single signature drink, but two preparations from the ground-floor menu illustrate the programme's character: Plums From Dreyer In Höör, which rests sweet-sour plums with vodka and eau-de-vie, and Raspberries & Whey, which pairs whey flavoured with raspberries with tequila. Both reflect the bar's sourcing-first approach, which earned it placement in the World's 50 Best Bars in 2023 and 2024.
- Why do people go to Röda Huset?
- Stockholm visitors and locals come to Röda Huset for The Scandinavian Cocktail Experience, a tasting menu served in the 18-seat upstairs cocktail bar that traces the flavours and seasonal shifts of the Nordic region through a structured drinks sequence. The bar ranked 31st on the World's 50 Best Bars list in 2023, giving it genuine international standing among serious cocktail travellers. The ground-floor walk-in bar provides access to the same ingredient philosophy in a less formal, no-reservation format.
- How does Röda Huset's tasting menu format differ from a standard cocktail bar visit?
- The Scandinavian Cocktail Experience operates upstairs in a dedicated 18-seat room led by head bartenders Hanna Oscarsson and Erik Andersson, following a curated sequence of drinks that maps Nordic ingredients to their seasonal contexts , closer in structure to a restaurant tasting menu than a drinks list. Guests choose individual cocktails in the conventional bar sense downstairs, where the walk-in programme also reflects the same sourcing standards. The distinction is format and depth of narrative rather than a difference in ingredient quality between the two floors. For a bar that has held Top 50 global ranking across multiple consecutive years, the upstairs experience is the full expression of what the programme is designed to deliver.
A Lean Comparison
A quick look at comparable venues, using the data we have on file.
| Venue | Notes | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Röda Huset | This venue | |
| Lucy's Flower Shop | ||
| Tjoget | ||
| A Bar Called Gemma | ||
| Pharmarium |
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