An Unlikely First Date: Persona Restaurant in Stockholm by Erik Bratsberg.

Persona is a new fine dining restaurant by French chef Louis Cespedes and sommelier Jonathan Nyström located in the heart of Stockholm’s Östermalm neighbourhood. Designed by Erik Bratsberg, the interior exudes a warmth more akin to a home than a hospitality project.

The partnership came out of an unlikely connection, Erik first met Louis on what can only be described as a professional blind date. With the former having just resigned from a finance job of all things, he was tentatively looking to make the move into design.

“A ceramicist I had just met when decorating my home insisted on introducing us. I think she saw that we were like-minded and on the same page in life—both creative souls wanting to start a new journey in life.” Erik explains. They stayed in touch and two years ago Louis found his dream location—an old sewing appliance store in need of a full conversion.

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Being his first hospitality project, Erik used this to his advantage avoiding the typical tropes of restaurant design. With most of his experience in residential interiors up to that point, a more homely and intimate environment was incorporated into the space.

Not that it was all smooth sailing for the designer, especially as a newcomer—you could call it a trial by fire. The conversion of the old boutique into a restaurant was a major challenge with everything from ventilation to WC regulations to consider, “the space is rather small so it was challenging to get the infrastructure to fit and blend in with the turn of the last century space,” Erik elaborates.

With the nitty gritty out of the way, the ambition for the project was to align the design expression with the high culinary level of the food—making it luxurious and elegant while still playing on the familiar and personal tone that Louis and Jonathan had in mind.

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The lounge resembles a warm and welcoming living room with soft materials and sculptural forms that embrace comfort. Warm wood tones shift in character and feel, with soft wavy curtains and fabrics. Erik designed custom sculptural pieces for the space comprising three coffee tables and five stools. In addition, he hand-painted the bar front and made plaster reliefs to decorate the top of it.

The dining room is less sculptural with straighter forms and lines bringing geometrical and asymmetrical shapes into sharp focus. Custom table legs, the heroes of the space, were designed by Erik out of raw industry steel tubes and patinated brass. The brass continues with the Italian mid-century style chandeliers as well as the five-metre-long bar front, textured and patinated by local artisans.

Carefully balancing the familiar with fancy, Erik’s first hospitality project hits all the right notes. Some things are kismet and it seems to have been a match made in heaven, as Erik himself says on the chance encounter, “I guess the date turned out to be a good match.”

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[Images courtesy of Erik Bratsberg. Photography by Erik Lefvander.]