Coop Nytorgsgatan — Supermarket in SoFo, Stockholm

This is one branch of Coop, on Nytorgsgatan in SoFo, and it works as the neighbourhood supermarket for the streets around it. You walk in and find the everyday things a kitchen needs, shelves kept in fresh-feeling order, and a pastry section that turns out to be the reason to come.

The kladdkaka is the one to take first: a moist chocolate cake, dense rather than fluffy, priced so a slice for dessert is an easy yes. Beside it sits kärleksmums, the coconut-topped Swedish bake, also moist and also cheap enough to add to the basket without thinking. Both are the kind of thing you buy on the way to the park rather than plan a trip around.

The shop covers most of what you need for a few days in the city. Staff are friendly when you ask where something is, though the checkout can move at a clip when it gets busy, so have your basket ready. On weekends, croissants are the item to look for if you want to sit in the park with breakfast.

Value is the thread here: the pastries cost little, and the rest of the shop is everyday supermarket pricing rather than anything speciality. Nothing about the place is a destination in itself, and that is fine, because it is not trying to be.

Come for the kladdkaka and kärleksmums, stay for the fact that it is open until 10 pm every night, which makes it useful when you land late or finish a day of walking in SoFo and need dinner supplies.