Working from a tiny plot of land in a remote part of Sweden, Magnus Nilsson, the head chef of Fäviken, has helped to transform change how Nordic cuisine is viewed across the world.
Opened in 2008, Fäviken is situated in an old barn in Jämtland, 750km north of the capital, Stockholm. It exclusively uses produce grown on the restaurant’s 8094 hectare grounds or very nearby, from fish to beef. The only exceptions are salt, sugar and alcoholic vinegar.
The restaurant has become a pilgrimage for foodies, who must book months in advance to dine in a room that fits only 24 guests. Together, they feast on a tasting menu of 32 courses consisting of food grown and cooked by a team of 37 people.
A single poached scallop, served inside a shell, on top of a layer of moss, decorated with burning juniper branches is among the dishes that Nilsson is famed for. He also used to saw bone marrow at the centre of the dining room, although he’s ditched that, now, alongside his very noisy ice cream machine from the 1920s. A meal at Faviken costs 3 000 Swedish krona (R4 681), with a wine-pairing service at an additional £160 (R2713).
Their efforts certainly haven’t gone unnoticed. Nilsson, 33, has two Michelin
stars, and has been featured in PBS’s The Mind of the Chef and Netflix’s The Chef’s Table. In 2015, he published The Nordic Cookbook, a definitive 700-page tome exploring the region’s varied food.
The Independent spoke to Nilsson about the pressure to innovate and why he’s launched a Chinese pop-up restaurant.
Why did you decide to launch a pop-up
“Basically, we were asked if we want to rent this space in Åre for two years. At first I thought it’s completely pointless. You can’t invest in a restaurant for that long, and I have never felt the urge to have many restaurants. But then I thought that it was a pretty cheap lease and it could be interesting.
“There are a lot of people who travel to Fäviken and ask what they should do the next day and we didn’t have a good answer up until now.
Also, there are a lot of very capable creative people
working at Fäviken. Their personal creativity - even if they are part of the more general creative process - at a restaurant like Fäviken that is highly controlled.
“It doesn’t allow people to be creative in their own way. I thought it would be a welcome and interesting temporary break for staff to run their own restaurant for a few months.
“We opened it this winter as a members club.
"The second one is Hoons, the Chinese restaurant which is run by Ethel, the sous chef at Fäviken, who is Singaporean Chinese. So it’s her heritage.
"We are going to do three or four more pop-ups before the lease runs out. Then we’ll see.”