In every bit of misery, something really good will always come along. In this case, it was the East India vessel Götheborg that became that spark of good, with the Christmas buffet we served there.

And what a success it was. 75 seats and 1300 guests reserved for the premiere… This with only one month’s worth of preparation.

In the pictures you can see how amazingly beautiful it is aboard, and me and Richard, the president of the East India vessel, stand proudly in front of the ship now that we have decided to start up again in March, to answer the requests to have larger dinners aboard. Take a look at the picture and admit that you can almost touch the Christmas feeling.

Last, but not least, dear friends, readers, guests and colleagues, we would like to take this opportunity and wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new 2009.

Bengt Sjöström, Claes Holm and Edin Dzemat

When I thought that the worst was over and that all we had to look forward to was the re-building, it turns out that thieves have entered the building and found their way down to our unharmed wine cellar. They forced their way through not only the outer doors and the alarm, but our nearly 10cm thick steel door as well. At first, it didn’t look so bad, but when we started going over exactly what went missing, we noticed that these people knew exactly what to take. They stole a relatively small quantity of wine, but despite this, approximately half the value of the wine cellar. Here are a few examples of what was taken.

Krug
Dom Périgno
Lanson Jeroboam
Ch. Palmer
Amarone Dal Forno
Ch.Cheval-Blanc
Ch.Torotany ,pomerol
Solaia
Chateau D´Yquem

It’s a sad fact, but what can you do? Here’s a picture of what it looked like before the burglary. I’m trying to get into the building to take pictures of the emptied wine cellar, and wil post these later. A funny detail is that the thieves also stole lemon vodka and simpler gin. Strange choices considering the other stolen items all were the best of the best. They must have a very mixed circle of friends.

Adding a picture of our current interior. It’s moving slowly right not; wondering myself how long this will take. At present, it seems to be quite a while until the reopening.

When I now step into the restaurant, there is a small excavator in the dining room. For those of you who have been our guests before, the excavator is in the innermost room.

The image with the cables hanging from the ceiling is from the middle dining room.

A different experience to say the least. There is a fog throughout the premises because even the plaster on the inside of the outer walls is being tapped off, and the shakes between floors is being torn down. On the window is a decal: Demolition in progress.

It was still dripping from the ceiling when I was in there. It feels unreal.

I think I will go to the woods and pick some chantarelles instead. Chantarelles always make you happy.

Now, the entire restaurant has been emptied.

All has been packed down and hauled off. It feels empty and a little sad. As you can see in the images, they have torn away the floor all the way down to the ground, and the ceiling all the way up to the beams between floors.

All this for the sake of the dousing water used during the fire. We are beginning to suspect that the remaining floors, ceilings and walls will have to go as well, as it appears to have been a tremendous amount of water that flooded us. The dousing water has poured in under floors, travelled through the ceiling, between beams, followed pipes and wiring.

In other words; the water is everywhere. It has even poured above and into the fans in the dining room

But it is probably better that they tear everything away this thoroughly now, so as to prevent any problems from arising later.

I look forward to being able to publish some pictures of how nice it will become.

We will be writing about the progress of the renovation here so that you, our guests and friends, can keep up with how the restoration moves along, and how it looks like right now in Linnéa.

At present it looks like the whole restaurant has been destroyed and the premises have been emptied of everything, to make the demolition go as smoothly as possible.

We hope to be able to update with new pictures every week. In time, the progress of the reconstruction will show, and the pictures will become less depressing than these which only show misery and disorder.

We really look forward to this.

You can still send us mail if you have any questions concerning, perhaps, orders and events. For example, we can still do the Cooking classes and also catering.

Dining at Linnéa for the next few weeks will be difficult, but if you continually check back to our website, we will post information about when the restaurant will reopen.

We look forward to hearing from you

Best wishes
Bengt Sjöström

As many of you already know, our building suffered a major fire on Sunday August 4. Fortunately the fire did not cause any injuries, but the entire building was seriously damaged. This means that Restaurant Linnéa will have to remain closed for some time ahead.

We will continually post information here on the website about the relaunch of the restaurant, currently planned for the late autumn of 2008, in fresh, newly renovated premises.

You are very welcome to contact us with orders for late autumn and winter even now. We will gladly accept these.

We wish to thank our faithful customers and friends for your support and heartfelt greetings during this time.

Best wishes
Bengt Sjöström with staff