When traditional becomes audacious... heart and bones.

A Monday in Uppsala, not many restaurants are open. That's probably why we ended up in Heart and Bones. Maybe you will pass the dim-light entrance by luck... but if you are a gourmet, you will come back by will.

Intimate ambience. (photo from instagram)

Restaurant Heart and Bones

(+) Multiple small portions for a maximum of experiences

(+) A waitress with a talented sense of service

(+) Focus on the taste

(+) Quality of ingredients

(-) Higher price than a normal restaurant (but worth it)

The dim light-entrance, you might not pay attention.

I have done all types of restaurants in Uppsala. So far I covered mainly middle to low budget options.  However, don't assume that Uppsala has only that. There are a couple of restaurants that categorise as more gastronomic. Unfortunately at the third one that claimad to offer me a memorable experience by making a "unique Asian fusion", I have started to despair... 

Until I find Heart and Bones!

The service 

At first, nothing distinguishes Heart and Bones from any restaurant of its category. The ambience is classy and intimate, no mistakes, no particular extravagances. The waitress that will take care of us has influenced my experience a lot. I think I place her service in the top three services I ever had in my life. Here is the reason why.

After sitting us, we order some wine. As in any traditional restaurant, she makes me taste. Unfortunately, like many times in Sweden, the wine does not suit me. It is too young too strong, my taste buds beg for something else, but I feel awkward to send back a wine I have chosen myself and that is not corky. In front of my silent embarrassment, the waitress pays attention, I finally express my worries in probably confused terms but she does not dismiss them. Instead, she spontaneously takes the initiative to change the wine. She has a strong concern to improve my experience, and you can feel it. She comes back like a magic fairy with a wine she thinks will suit me. And she got it right: it is exactly what I wanted.

The art of serving is very subtle, and she understood all of it. During all of the evening, she was attentive without invading, discrete but not absent. I rarely found such balance in a service.

The food

The card offers medium size dishes (a little bit bigger than tapas but smaller than a main, think about the size of a starter). The idea is to take three or four different dishes per person and to vary as much as possible the sensation you will go through.

I will not talk about all the dishes I took, but only about the foie gras and the Vol-au-vent, I think they represent the well the intelligence behind their food.

The foie gras so. Unlike many restaurants, they choose to serve it like this, cut, raw, with some ground pistachio on it, bread aside. This simplicity for a luxury ingredient is actually the genius part of it. No complicated stack of layers. No triple backflip of grapefruit. Just an ingredient, well selected, well presented. I taste... it is good quality, they were right not to try to cook it or to add other condiments.

The bread aside the foie gras. Varied, generous and of quality.

The vol-au-vent is on the other scale of the social spectrum in French food culture. It is a small hollow case of puff pastry usually filled with a bechamel of mushroom or meat. Compared to foie gras it is a very cheap meal. You buy it at your butcher and eat it with your kids. It is the first time I see that offered in a restaurant, above all a gastronomic one. It was a risky bet, yet the talented execution makes it a win. The vol-au-vent was filled up with chanterelles and very little bechamel. As I close my eyes to taste, the balance is perfect, you feel like you are in an autumn forest picking your mushrooms. They maintained the crunchiness of the texture. Well done.

My conclusion is that this restaurant stands out by re-exploring the classics humbly and graciously.  I don't know who is behind that, but they have a real culture about food and they genuinely like it. I don't know who is the waitress that served us, I just remember that she had extremely short dark hair, I hope that she will still be there next time I come.

Thank you Heart and Bones.