The Nordic Nomad

The Nordics

All Nordic winners in the World’s 50 Best Bars 2022

The Nordics • Eat & drink • All Nordic winners in the World’s 50 Best Bars 2022

The top 4 Nordic cocktail bars

The Nordic cocktail bar scene is booming. Recent years have seen a rise in Nordic cocktails inspired by traditional Scandinavian ingredients and recipes. Since 2004, the World’s 50 Best Bars has sent its judges around the globe in search of the very best. In the 2022 edition of the World’s 50 Best Bars (which, despite its name, lists 100 bars), four Nordic cocktail bars make the cut. Here’s the full list of Nordic cocktail bars and their rankings.

Himkok [↑]

Himkok, the bar that formed Scandinavian cocktail culture when Erk Potur opened it in 2015, is hidden behind an inconspicuous façade. Himkok, the Norwegian word for moonshine, attempts to embody Norwegian culture through cocktails and spirits distilled while remaining true to its surrounding nature. With a fully operational distillery producing aquavit, gin, and vodka, Himkok is able to create drinks and products with a true Nordic flavour via sustainable and empirical production. Signature drinks like the Birch, a Martini-style cocktail served with a blue cheese-stuffed olive, are served in a rustic 1930s-inspired space with dark wood, gilded mirrors, and low lighting.

Himkok
Storgata 27
Oslo
Norway

Photography courtesy of Himkok

Lucy’s Flower Shop [↓]

Lucy’s Flower Shop, hidden away in the basement of a 20th-century downtown building, epitomizes Stockholm cool. It has already established itself as an institution in the capital’s lively cocktail scene after just three years. It looks like something out of a 1960s spy novel, with the purple and red decor, the use of light and shadow, and the precise movements of the bartenders behind the long, wooden bar. Cocktails rarely contain more than four ingredients, delicately balanced in gentle alchemy to always exceed expectations. Rye & Apple, a sweet-sour-spicy-boozy balancing act, is a modern classic.

Lucy’s Flower Shop
Birger Jarlsgatan 20
Stockholm
Sweden

Photography courtesy of Bohman+Sjöstrand and Lucy’s Flower Shop

Tjoget [↓]

Multi-space venue Tjoget has been featured on the annual list of The World’s 50 Best Bars various times. The venue, a cocktail bar, eatery, wine bar and beer café in one, was founded by bartenders Andreas Bergman and Joel Söderbäck in the former working-class area of Hornstull. It lies a little off the beaten path but is well worth the visit. Tjoget’s signature is Beets by Tjoget, a cocktail that mixes beetroot and vodka with coconut and ginger.

Tjoget
Hornsbruksgatan 24
Stockholm
Sweden

Photography courtesy of Tjoget

Röda Huset [↑]

The red house, or Röda Huset, is a restaurant and bar owned by bartender Hampus Thunholm. He hopes to develop the Scandinavian cocktail style here. Instead of building the drink with alcohol as a starting point, his philosophy is first to mix a good drink and then add spirits. He employs traditional techniques, but also has molecular elements and resorts to snazzy machines and liquid nitrogen when he feels it adds something to the drink.