The hotel at the Arena

Quality Hotel Friends

1200 guests at our grand opening Thursday the 26 Sept. 2013

We've been busy with all the catering within Friends Arena for the past year and our Quality Hotel Friends has been open for the past month.

We just had our grand opening 26 of sept. 1200 guests in our ballroom and throughout the hotel. A gala night where we got to show off our skills. A Swedish menu with canapés starter buffets and hot food followed by cheese and desserts.

Later during the show arounds there was raw food snacks and energy drinks as well as pass around share food and a midnight snack, if anyone was still hungry on their way home there were complimentary hot dogs at the taxi queue.

What a fantastic kitchen crew we have so much experience and every one steps up to the plate and delivers, old time attitude you just can't beat it.

canapés at the opening party

25 floos up

On Top

At last we opened the doors to our new hotel, Quality Hotel Friends.

The kitchen window picture is from our top floor restaurant "On Top" 25 floors up.

Restaurant On Top as well as the kitchen offers panoramic views over Stockholms northern suburbs, how high can you get, and with a restaurant ambition to match the view.

On Top is open Tuesday to Saturday nights from the start, changes of course will be made when our umbilical connected 50000 seater Friends Arena kicks in with a concert, match or Event.

Fantastic that we have opened and just as fantastic that the whole building is pretty dam impressive.

Pretty cool kitchen window and view.

truffles

Its always fun to buy some truffles, whether one likes them or not.

From a cooks point of view there always fun and there's always great interest in them in the kitchen, we ordered one kilo for our grand opening launch party this Thursday 26 sept.

1200 people in our banquet room.

The picture represents only ½kilo the other ½ will be delivered tomorrow.

Truffles for the opening party

The opening countdown

One week until we open our hotel

The final countdown, on Saturday we move from a arena food & beverage operation in the fantastic Friends Arena to an ultra modern brand new 400 room conference hotel with fantastic possibilities.

On Tuesday we have an invitation trial breakfast, if anyone wants to come by for breakfast let me know, Tuesday between 6,30 -9,00, we're practicing for our breakfast which starts on the 1 sept.

We're following up the breakfast trial with a press invitation on Wednesday, where we'll be showing off our "on top" restaurant "25 floor" to local and international press.

On Saturday the 31st not only do we open our doors but we have an AIK football match, the spill over into the hotel should really put us to the test, then its full steam ahead, not every hotel has the facilities that we have, banqueting for thousands.................

Two weeks until we open our hotel

Its now only two weeks before we open our fantastic Hotel, Quality Hotel Friends - our hotel is built directly into the surrounding Friends Arena here in Solna.

Building works are continuing with the surrounding area Scandinavians biggest shopping mall, over 250 retail outlets as well as apartment blocks and offices.

A whole new suburb is under construction.

Our new Hotel will feature a restaurant on the top floor, 25 floors up with panoramic views over northern Stockholm and a contemporary Swedish menu with international influences.

A whole new conference wing on the fifth floor with eight modern conference rooms featuring Quality Hotels own soft serve ice cream and popcorn conference concepts.

Also on the fifth floor is another banquet room this one only for about 350 people, it will be a great compliment to our 1000 seater on the 4th floor.

Our kitchens straddles between the arena and hotel on the 2nd, 4th, and 5th floors, linking together both buildings, our breakfast/conference restaurant is on the 4th floor, this will be a busy restaurant, as we have 399 hotel rooms and conference facilities for many more.

All in all we have 12 kitchens, its seldom they're all open at the same time, but when they are we know about it.

New Equipment

We're working on an equipment list for our new restaurant on the 25th floor of our new hotel, we don't have a name as yet but it should be confirmed any day.

The restaurant kitchen will be a little smaller than we first expected and the restaurant will be a little more modern than expected.

This opens up our original ideas to a whole new world of modern technics.

So it will be an early Christmas list for us, we're short listing an equipment shopping list that will help develop us into a modern restaurant.

We'll start with a paco jet, circulator, termomix hot, a sausage machine, danish cheese slicers and just for good measure a big green egg barbecue, we thought it might be fun to do seasonal nuts in our top floor bar, maybe our Autumn mix can be apple smoked with apple pieces and local lingon berries rather than the everyday salted nuts.