Petite France's delicious macarons...

If Sweden is not world-renowned for its bountiful repertoire of baked goods, France definitely is. What consequently results in the meeting of these two seemingly unrelated countries is a genuine appreciation for the classics; the baguettes, macarons and tarts that are so pretty they make you wonder if you wouldn’t savour them better with your eyes rather than your mouth. These pastries are certainly what greet you as soon as you enter the tiny area of Petite France where the customers can stand around marvelling and drooling at the risk of crowding the limited space.

The regular menu sits slightly unnoticed next to the entrance, displaying several reasonably-priced dishes in chalk. Walk further into the café, and you find a larger room with comfy-looking chairs and a view of the street through the window that spans across the entire room. As is the case at any other popular café in Stockholm, lunchtime posed a bit of difficulty in finding a seat, but I was lucky enough to grab a couple of stools in what I can only call ‘the hallway’—cosy as it is – between the bakery and the room.

Another hardship I faced was the decision-making process you may well expect to encounter upon confronting the array of colourful macarons and the technically-assembled tarts in the bottom row. At 180 Swedish kronor (approx. £17/20€), a bag of macarons lies on the more expensive end of the scale. However, a few of the tarts come with one on them — a sampling chance which my friend thought was too good to miss – she ended up ordering a raspberry tart with an appropriately pink macaron serving as garnish. Sweetly fruity, the tart strongly contrasted with my choice of a tartelette caramel, which tasted as if it was the only thing that existed in this world. For this dish, the entire spotlight rests on the caramel filling that is guaranteed to knock you out on first bite; yet it is not too rich as to make you gasp frantically for water. Simply put, it is one of those things that would go on the list of ‘caramels you should taste before you die’.

On a slightly unexpected note, the history behind the building of the Gulddraken-winning café (the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter‘s award for restaurants, bar and cafés) is actually significantly embedded in Swedish history and the country’s much studied welfare system. Once home to the Nobel Prize-winning couple Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, the yellow building was built by the famous functionalist architect Sven Markelius and was the site of a collective housing project aimed at making life easier for its inhabitant workers. A restaurant on the bottom floor (presumably where the café now lies) sent food up to the apartments via a food tray, while the top floor contained a daycare centre for the workers’ children. Perhaps a bit of an unlikely location for the unsuspecting French pastries, but it means that today the little street of John Ericssonsgatan now holds not one, but two intriguing reasons for a visit. After all, you can never have too many incentives for leaving the warmth of your home to subzero temperature and icy pavements.

More information is available on the Petite France website.

Desserts that will definitely have you salivating - how can one possibly make a choice?