An exclusive first taste of Solen, Adam & Albin’s new Los Angeles-inspired hotspot

It’s one week before the grand opening of Solen, celebrity chefs Adam Dahlberg and Albin Wessman’s expansive new restaurant in Stockholm’s unassuming meatpacking district, and the vibe is positively zen. A slew of kitchen staff in matching T-shifts and backwards caps are quietly prepping a hot dish tasting in the open kitchen. Behind them, embers from an open coal fire emit a soft glow. There are cacti and fireplaces, pale wood and an Alexander Calder-esque mobile of suns and leaves hanging from the impossibly high ceiling. Even the chefs themselves exude a laid-back attitude – impressive given they’ll be welcoming 600 guests to the spot’s opening party in just a few days. “We’ve done it a couple times, and we know that it’s going to be okay,” says Dahlberg with a shrug. Apparently California inspired more than just just the menu – it permeates Solen's very mood.

That isn’t to say that Solen serves traditional Californian food (if there is such a thing), but rather the sort of food that’s served in Los Angeles hotspots today. Ingredient-driven dishes with Middle Eastern influences (“Middle Eastern flavours are really hot now in LA,” notes Wessman). The sort of stuff that is both sharable and crowd-pleasing. Creamy baba ghanoush with house-made pita, pulpo skewers, coal-grilled prawns served huevos rancheros-style and, of course, pizza. Unfussy but still elevated. As Dahlberg puts it: “the food of the sun”. Well that explains the name. I ask him to elaborate. “Well, what are they doing in LA?” He asks. “It’s a mix of a little bit of Italian, California, Mexico – that’s how we saw it. So we said, Okay, let’s do that, but what is that? That’s the food of the sun.” Wessman chimes in: “In Stockholm, you can’t call it California kitchen.”

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The other thing especially American about Solen: its size. The restaurant clocks in at an impressive 850 square meters. “It was a slaughterhouse,” says Dahlberg, pointing out the track overhead from which the meat used to hang. Their first reaction when they saw the space? “We were like, ‘This is f***ing awesome’,” he says. Maintaining the soaring industrial ceiling, Dahlberg and Wessman called upon architecture studio Specific Generic to build a massive circular dining room, a large open fireplace at its centre. The adjacent bar offers a cosier space to enjoy Negronis and Micheladas.

The third Adam & Albin restaurant in town (the others being casual Toyko-inspired eatery Misshumasshu and Michelin-starred Adam/Albin), Solen offers a looser canvas for the guys to experiment with a bit of this and a bit of that. “You don’t have to follow the rules,” says Wessman. “Like, if you go to a Mexican restaurant it will be very specific, or Italian – I mean, don’t speak about Italians. There are rules and laws about how you do things.” It was a learning curve for two guys new to both Middle Eastern and Mexican cuisine. “We don’t want to do the same food we’ve done earlier in life,” says Dahlberg. “We don’t know anything about Mexican food, basically. So for us, that was kind of interesting.” Unsurprisingly, the research process involved many meals in Los Angeles (they name-check Horses and Bestia, two A-list eateries, among their favourite spots) and, when it came time to staff the kitchen, they went global, plucking talent from Italy, Brazil and Argentina.

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Dalhberg and Wessman have been testing the menu for weeks now and are quietly confident in the finished product. “It’s a mix of all these kitchens, but the way we cook it,” says Dahlberg. “You can already feel that it’s our food.” So what is the Adam & Albin special sauce? “We build the dishes – the layers. That’s how you get the deliciousness,” says Dahlberg. “Whether it’s a one-star restaurant or the simplest ramen, thinking layers with contrast,” adds Wessman.

Take, for instance, the pizza. Theirs is a personalised mix of Neapolitan and Roman (“an Italian guy would not say that it’s either of the two,” notes Wessman). Dahlberg’s personal favourite is topped with a generous helping of greens – a salad, basically – and taleggio, pecorino and fior di latte cheese. Another features mushroom, potato and, interestingly, tahini. “It’s not going to be your standard pizza,” says Wessman. Nor will there be your standard desserts; in what’s sure to become an Instagram moment, the guys are serving up creme brûlée topped with jamón ibérico.

Unlike a Los Angeles hotspot, it won’t be impossible to snag a table at Solen (not according to the chefs, anyway). There are plenty of seats and a long high-top left open for walk-ins. In the summertime, they’ll expand outdoors, partnering with nightlife aficianados Fållan (responsible for Trädgården and Eden) to create a joint to spend long summer days, drinking and snacking. “We have said that we should never say ‘no’ to anyone,” says Dahlberg. “You could wait, but everyone is going to get something.”