Magnus Nilsson is a very busy man. His day job involves running one of the world’s most sought after destination dining restaurants, Fäviken. He has been featured in television series like Chef's Table and the Mind of a Chef but that’s not all. He has also written what some would consider to be the bible of Nordic cuisine called the Nordic Cookbook. It has taken him around all of Scandinavia, meeting people, researching old recipes and taking over 8,000 photographs during the three years it took him to work on the cookbook. He did all this in his free time writing over 700 recipes in the process. Some might wonder how he manages to do all this in a world where time seems to be so precious but as Magnus tells Food and Wine Gazette, “for me, it is important to do a lot of different things because like that you do not get tired of doing just one thing. It is a way to keep feeling motivated really," he said when I caught up with him during the GELINAZ! DOES UPPER AUSTRIA. As one of … [Read more...]
Magnus Ek: ‘The pace of innovation in food is incredible and is becoming faster’
Swedish chef Magnus Ek is a pioneer in many ways. He started using edible plants and foraging for food more than 20 years ago when it was still unheard of at the time. He did it without much fanfare and you could say that he is one of the early pioneers of the new Nordic cuisine. He is conscious of the fact that the ecosystem surrounding food is set to change but he cannot tell the direction it will go. "If I look at the kitchen of 20 years ago to how it looks now, it is completely different. The pace of invention and innovation has been incredible. And the curve is building really fast," he says. Magnus Ek opened his restaurant Oaxen Krog in Sweden more than 20 years ago at a time when foraging what not what restaurants did. Today, he still forages almost every day. He actually says he has more time for it now than in the past because things have become easier. “It used to be very difficult to find the vegetables I needed in summer. I used to have to go to different farms and … [Read more...]
Magnus Nilsson: ‘Unlike other creative industries, you don’t get a second chance in a restaurant’ – Chef’s Table review
"Unlike other creative professions, when you cook in a restaurant you don't get a second chance. You cannot go to customer and say the crab was not very good today so you should come and try it another day," says 32-year-old chef Magnus Nilsson, chef of Swedish restaurant Fäviken. The Chef's Table documentary of this talented Swedish chef is a must watch, as it depicts the story of this creative chef who is cooking in what is probably the most well known remote restaurant in the world. Listed 25th in the world's 50 Best restaurants for 2015 announced on 1 June, Fäviken is unique in many ways. Saying that the restaurant is in the middle of nowhere is an understatement. It is located in Järpen, around 750 kilometres north of Stockholm, and Nilsson started cooking there by chance given the fact that he was recruited to oversee the wine cellars as a consultant. This was after he decided to stop cooking on his return to Sweden from France. The documentary brilliantly portraits this … [Read more...]
Bjorn Frantzen: An impressive feat preparing 19 dishes in 44 minutes
There is no question that one of the most impressive cooking performances I have ever seen was Bjorn Frantzen's show at Chef's Revolution in Zwolle organised by Jonnie and Therese Boer of De Librije earlier this year. Together with his team, they prepared 19 dishes which are normally take three and a half hours to prepare in just 44 minutes. He assured the audience that 'we have not trained for this before,' which made it all the more impressive. The Swedish chef who has two Michelin stars for his restaurant Frantzen in Sweden and is listed 23rd in the World's Best 50 restaurants said that he ends up traveling too many times to tell the restaurant story and what he really wanted to do was cook so he was trying a new experiment which is to showcase the dinner they prepared in the restaurant the previous Saturday. Frantzen serves one tasting menu of 19 dishes and it is changed every day according to what is fresh, local and seasonal. Anyone who follows this Swedish chef on Twitter … [Read more...]