Villa & Trädgård de luxe

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A Yellow Villa with a Serious Kitchen

In the spring of 2019, the team behind Café de luxe moved into a yellow-painted wooden villa near the cathedral in Växjö. The building was once a curate's residence, and its many rooms retain that old-fashioned character — mismatched stoneware from the 1970s, furnishings from the last century, slightly hard chairs and all. The atmosphere, as the White Guide noted when awarding the restaurant its Fine level recognition in 2026, is immediately welcoming.

What to Expect at the Table

The kitchen decides the menu, so there is no card to deliberate over. Head chef Carl combines the traditional with the inventive, and the cooking moves in a pleasant Nordic-Italian register. The White Guide's reviewers singled out crispy raw pancakes with smetana and seaweed caviar, roasted black salsify with tomato and pine nuts, and slices of wild duck breast served with a fresh tomato vinaigrette and soft pear compote. The meal concludes with pizza from the wood-fired oven — hearty and wonderful, in their words. No one leaves the priest's house hungry.

Beyond the set dinner format, the restaurant also runs a "Pizzabjudning" — a more relaxed pizza evening that begins with a table full of snacks before the wood-fired pizzas arrive one by one.

The Wine Cellar and the Garden

Villa & Trädgård de luxe is a genuine destination for natural wine. The cellar ranges from Österlen to Jura and down to Granada, and the White Guide reviewer paused specifically over a bottle from Umbria. The restaurant's own sommelier leads tastings and cocktail workshops, and the house has recently added an in-house brewery — Brygghus de luxe — on the attic floor, run by brewer Simon.

The garden is as much a part of the experience as the dining rooms. An outdoor bar lets guests order drinks and snacks without queuing, dogs are welcome in the garden, and the programme of events — live music, vinyl DJ nights, art vernissages — keeps the villa lively well beyond dinner service.