Jämtland has a distinct food culture that Östersund takes seriously. Reindeer is the signature meat — cured, smoked, sautéed with lingonberries and cream, or served as thin-sliced carpaccio with pickled vegetables — and the quality is genuinely high. The Sami reindeer herding tradition of the region means the meat is local, the animals are pasture-raised on mountain meadows, and the preparation draws on generations of knowledge about how to cook it well.
The city has a concentration of good restaurants around the pedestrian centre and the waterfront, with several that make a point of using Jämtland's local and foraged ingredients: cloudberries, arctic mushrooms, freshwater fish from Storsjön and the surrounding mountain lakes. Char (röding) is the local fish to order — farmed in the cold deep lakes of the region, it's leaner and cleaner-tasting than salmon and excellent simply cooked. The Jamtli museum café is a good lunch option if you're already visiting the museum. For something more urban, the restaurants along Storgatan in the city centre include everything from traditional Swedish husmanskost (home cooking) to modern Nordic.