Restaurang AG, short for Allmänna Galleriet – nestled upstairs on a meatpacking district style side street of the up-and-coming Kungsholmen – is a Slow Food haven serving all manner of masterfully chosen and expertly butchered meat. In fact, it’s all rather New York. Tiled walls. Concrete floors. Zinc deli bar. Velvet curtains. AG even boasts its very own dry-ageing unit doubling as a glass-encased meat museum, which is in your face once you swing the doors open. In fact, I was half expecting to see the waiting staff in Lady Gaga style flesh-revealing meat dresses but I was disappointed. Just chic, urban and understated Stockholm style.

Dry-aging locker

The Meat Tree

Yum, Yum & Yum.

To add to the somewhat Daliesque and slightly in-your-face brutish but fantastical feel, take a gawk at the Meat Tree to your left. Yes. A sculpture by Michel Bussien. I am not sure what he had in mind. It looks like large globules of ­cholesterol dripping off the end of the branches to me. But I suppose it is appropriate considering the key to their burgers becoming notorious is good old-fashioned fat of the land: lard. What you get are burgers so tasty, meaty, juicy, succulent, and downright do-able, that they merit risking a lard-ass.

Far left of the restaurant is my favourite part of AG: the deli bar. You stand at tall marble tables or at the deli counter and order tapas and seriously good wines by the glass. They excel in choosing top quality charcuterie, and serving authentic tapas dishes such as fried pimientos and salted almonds. The morcilla blood sausage charcuterie is a must.

Quick, they're coming - for God's sake, look happy!

Welcome! There is nothing I like more than 12 food writers in my kitchen!

"Particularly this one!"

AG owners, Johan Jureskog and Klas Ljungquist, used to work together at Rölf’s Kök – also in Stockholm and renowned for traditional Swedish food – but then banded together when this funky meat district style loft popped-up on the market. Klas is front-of-house and Johan is the meat man in the kitchen. Indeed, the kitchen is where it’s all at. As one curious bunch of international food journalists we storm the kitchen and swarm around the long counter watching steaks being fired up, joints being hacked, herb butter and grilled sourdough bread going out on wooden slabs, and a happy bunch of people sitting in the middle of it all. (AG does private kitchen dining for those in the know).

AG super-marbled steak

A whole lot of bones

Herb butter-in-waiting

The now not-so-secret private dining table in the kitchen

Lamb in dill cream sauce.

"This makes me REALLY happy".

Dinner time. We haven’t eaten in at least 2 hours since cocktails and a honey tasting at the Hilton. We could be losing weight. But worry not.  No sooner are we seated at a long banqueting table, when huge legs of tender lamb arrive in vats of a creamy dill gravy, a traditional Swedish classic called dill kött. It is flavoured with juniper, Swedish high-acidity vinegar called ättika, and with autumnal root vegetables for support. It is quite a feast to the eyes. I am a bit scared. Where do we start? Everybody looks concernedly at their dining neighbour until, in the true spirit of casual dining and unobtrusive staff policy, the waitress nodded that we dig in and help ourselves. After a few creamy and almost sweet and sour mouthfuls later, Björn Tesch the photographer makes a rather profound statement. “This makes me really happy. I don’t demand much more from life than this”. Obviously, Björn is sitting opposite me, but I suppose he could have been talking about the dill kött.

Should we interview the chef to make it look like we're working?

Ha! As if. I prefer Gonzo journalism anyway. Interviewing is for amateurs.

OK. You go first. No! You go! Oh! The excitement!

And Mr. Bruce Palling of The Wall Street Journal gets the short straw. "Yes!" says Chef Johan, "I love talking to food journalists in the middle of the busy dinner shift!".

Dessert is another comforting delight – big homely dishes of blueberry crumble. It sounds so simple, but it is heavenly – mounds of fresh, in-season, sweet Swedish blueberries under crunchy crumble with lashings of lasciviously whipped cream. I am so full I feel like reposing in the Meat Tree with a glass of red and fuse the lard arts with my forming lard ass. But no rest. We are off for cocktails now with the renowned PR-pro and man-about-town Oscar Eldin of Bartenders Choice Awards to experience the bar-tending talent at Marie Laveau, Brasserie Le Rouge and The Gold Bar at Nobis. Over, and indeed, out.

Phew. They're gone. Stick on the Gloria Gaynor, Klas. Now!