Michelin Stars II – Nordic by Nature will feature at the Culinary Zinema: Film and Gastronomy section at the 69th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
Nordic By Nature is a culinary documentary filmed over an 18 month period that follows the endearing and brutal destiny and everyday life of the Faroe Islands and its culinary pearl KOKS, helmed by chef Poul Andrias Ziska.
While the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to focus on core values and what was important, for Ziska and the restaurant this was nothing new. The two Michelin starred restaurant is situated in a low ceiling farmhouse with grass on the roof. It is surrounded by luscious green fields surrounded by rolling hills inside the isolated Faroe-archipelagos in the middle of the Nordic seas.
It is almost mythological restaurant in hobbit settings that has received international acclaim for embracing the mindset the world now finds itself with. Everything sourced, cooked and enjoyed at KOKS comes from the terrain of and waters inside and surrounding the Faroe Islands.
Film Director Rasmus Dinesen, culinary producer Kristian Brask Thomsen and producer Jesper Jarl Becker follow the work at KOKS as it seeks to reopen following a global lockdown. 90 per cent of the restaurant guests are tourists.
They also follow the small Faroese producers from scallop divers to foragers who risk their lives harvesting seagulls eggs from nests at the very edge of cliffs. They try to answer the question as to how it is possible to run a top restaurant like this in such a remote place ‘at the end of the world’.
To get to the restaurant, guests had to take immense detours to dine at. Its cuisine is based on just 500 square miles of products in a terrain that is rugged, climate subpolar – windy, wet, cloudy and cold. Temperatures are low and there is everlasting light in summer but darkness all through winter.
The Faroe Islands is a microcosmos of exciting products, Nordic history, viking tales, has 37 words for fog, more sheep than people, ravishing waterfalls, eccentric personalities, a native tongue only spoken by some 50,000 – and a restaurant called KOKS.
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