ScandiKitchen Brings a Taste of the North to London Victoria

London has a way of adopting cuisines from every corner of the world, folding them seamlessly into its culinary fabric, and yet still making them feel like rare discoveries. For those who know their cinnamon buns from their cardamom twists, ScandiKitchen has been one of the capital’s most treasured secrets for nearly two decades. Now, the Fitzrovia original finally has a sibling: a new outpost on Buckingham Palace Road, a stone’s throw from Victoria Station.

ScandiKitchen isn’t just another café. It’s a cultural anchor, a portal into the gentle, considered rhythms of Scandinavian life — where coffee is more ritual than habit, where open sandwiches carry the weight of history, and where simplicity is always laced with substance.

Step inside the new Victoria site from 7.30am and you’ll catch the scent of warm cinnamon and fresh porridge in the air. This is breakfast with northern character: slow, nourishing, and carefully put together. Overnight oats layered with berries, or a soft, sweet cinnamon bun, are not mere indulgences — they’re invitations to pause in a city that rarely does.

By midday, the counter tells a different story. Open sandwiches — gravlax with pickled fennel, herring with sharp sweetness, or the ever-faithful Swedish meatballs paired with creamy beetroot salad — line up like edible postcards from Stockholm, Copenhagen, or Oslo. Daily specials keep the menu alive with variation, but the heart of it remains the same: a celebration of honest, well-made food that connects Londoners to Scandinavian tradition.

The People Behind the Plates

The ScandiKitchen story is rooted in both love and instinct. Danish-born Brontë Aurell and her Swedish husband Jonas arrived in the UK 25 years ago, bringing with them a yearning for the tastes of home. What started as a café and grocery shop in Fitzrovia has grown into an institution — one that fuels both nostalgia and curiosity. Their e-commerce site delivers over a thousand Nordic products to doors across the UK, and their wholesale arm keeps restaurants stocked with everything from rye crispbreads to lingonberry jam.

But it is in the café itself — with the clink of cups, the hum of conversation, the sight of pastries disappearing fast from the counter — that the brand’s essence lives.

To think of ScandiKitchen as just a café would be to underestimate its role in London’s cultural ecosystem. It offers not just sustenance but a sense of belonging — for expats craving home, for Londoners seeking something new yet timeless, and for anyone drawn to the understated cool of Scandinavian living.

After 18 years weathering the city’s culinary shifts — recessions, trends, even a pandemic — Brontë and Jonas have held fast to what they believe in. Their new Victoria opening is not expansion for expansion’s sake, but a continuation of their philosophy: food as a cultural bridge, an everyday luxury, and a quietly defiant act of slowing down in a city always in motion.

ScandiKitchen Victoria feels less like a new chapter and more like a homecoming — not just for the couple who built it, but for the city that has been waiting for it.