The dining room was pleasingly elegant, and I am always happy to see a large ham in a restaurant ready to be carved. We skipped the offer of the tasting menu as the a la carte options sounded so good. We were right to do so.

We all chose the same first course, veal carpaccio. This consisted of little rolls of raw veal stuffed with grated parmesan and rocket. Quite, quite delicious; meaty enough with a brilliant parmesan character. This really made me think we were in for a good time.

We then had a pasta course. Daniel had some ravioli filled with scallops. They had a good scallop character but were a tad under-cooked. Leena’s seafood risotto was a slightly over-cooked, but it was so bursting with fishy goodness that this didn’t really matter. I stole quite a lot of it from her plate. My cannelloni stuffed with veal, Parma ham and spinach was totally faultless. It had a great meaty character, wasn’t dominated by the spinach (who wants to eat plants anyway?) and was cooked to perfection. I really enjoyed it, so much so that it was painful to pass on forkfuls for Daniel and Leena to try.

The option of a grilled veal chop for the main course was too tempting for Daniel and I to turn down, so we both had it. It was cooked very well, properly grilled on the outside and moist in the middle. Most enjoyable. Leena had saltimbocca, veal escalope with Parma ham, which was buttery, tasty and tender. Good stuff!

For dessert Daniel had a a hazelnut ice cream truffle, Leena chose a chocolate delice. The considered opinion about these is that they were perfectly good but not the most stellar of desserts

The wine list leaned quite heavily toward the expensive side, but all wines lists do in Stockholm. We had an agreeable bottle of Primitivo, from a producer whose name escapes me, and a great bottle of Tignanello 1999 which didn’t seem so outrageously priced. They had an interesting selection of Italian sweet wines by the glass to have with dessert. We tried three different ones and were entertained by their weirdly pleasurable characters.

The meal was quite satisfying, by the end we all felt we had done well. What more can you ask from a restaurant? Clearly a worth a visit if you need good Italian food in Stockholm.

Contact details: Mancini, Tunnelgatan 1, 11137 Stockholm, Sweden. Telephone (+46) 8 21 53 10.

Sadly we had failed to deal with one of the better aspects of the restaurant: it has no alcohol license. If we’d have known we would have brought along some refreshing beverage. Every table has a little transparent teapot filled with green tea, but green tea is a pointless and largely nasty drink so we didn’t bother.

The menu was brief but had a reasonably interesting selection of Japanese goodies. We ordered a starter and main course each.

The starters were quite lovely. Leena ordered turbot sashimi with yuzo butter. The turbot was very extremely tasty with a great texture. Delicious. Not as lovely as my starter, though, which was hilariously rare beef in fish sauce with a little sprinkling of dried chilli on top. The beef was extremely high-quality and tender and it worked a treat with the nam pla and chilli. This was quite like the hot and sour beef salad we often prepare. I enjoyed this so much that thought this would easily be the best starter, then I tried Daniel’s lime-acidulated mackerel in endive leaves. This had a wonderful progression of flavours as you ate it and the texture was very pleasing; an excellent dish.

We then moved onto our main courses. Leena had a noodle dish that she turned her nose up at because it contained coriander. I had a little taste of the broth and thought it most tasty. Daniel and I ordered two different plates of 15 pieces of sushi. One of these selections was specifically made from fish caught in the North Atlantic. It was very good that all the fish was at room temperature, not straight out of the fridge. This resulted in the flavour not being muted. All of the old sushi favourites were there, skilfully pre-seasoned with wasabi. The king fish from the North Atlantic merits a special mention for its rich, mouth-coating flavour and wonderful, dense texture. The zander (aka pike-perch) was also top bunny. This was properly good sushi prepared very well.

It was a pleasant dining environment with good sushi and great starters. The staff were helpful and attentive (and spoke English faultlessly). A fun time was had by all. It would have been improved if we had brought some bottles of Kirin, but then even we don’t need to drink all of the time. This was easily one of the best places I’ve eaten in Sweden, definitely worth a trip.

Contact details: Råkultur, Kungstengatan 2, 114 25 Stockholm. Telephone: (+46) 08 696 23 25.