Vete-Katten, Stockholm

Vete-Katten is a classic Swedish pastry café and coffee shop, founded in 1928 by Ester Nordhammar. Its work began with baking, confectionery, and chocolate making, and the business is known for traditional Swedish cakes and sweets. The name means “the wheat cat” in Swedish.

As local legend has it, the unusual name came from the founder’s reply when she was asked what to call the establishment. The café has always been smoke-free. For a long period, women staffed both the customer-facing area and the work behind the counter, which was unusual for its time. Ownership shifted to Agneta and Östen Brolin in 1979, then to new proprietors in 2012, among them master pastry chef Johan Sandelin, who had been part of the staff since 1997.