Faviken: Are Sweden_A truly unique farm to table experience

I planned a short trip into Scandinavia to report on the booming farm to table trend as well as the community farms found in even the most urban areas. I had only planned to stop in the small town of Are for a night to try Restaurant Grow (covered in another entry). During my meal there, I was asked to join a group at Faviken for dinner. Faviken has recently dropped off the list of the top 50 restaurants in the world, but it didn’t change my excitement at this opportunity and I doubt anyone else would miss the opportunity either. I had been reviewing the cookbook for a while, not to recreate what Chef Magnus Nillson is doing, but how and why he is doing it. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Nillson. My fellow diners were from all over the world. Three flew in from Japan on a last minute flight upon hearing there had been a cancelation at the restaurant.

Fäviken cycle

On Fäviken we are passionate in our way of looking at the raw material and humbled by the amazing opportunities Jämtland, Tröndelag and especially Kallbygden gives us in our work. We do what you’ve always done in the Jämtland mountain farms, we follow the seasonal variations and traditions. We live in the countryside. During summer and fall, we harvest what grows on our land and refines them with methods that we rediscovered from our rich cooking tradition or the discovery in seeking to preserve the raw material’s unique properties. We build up stocks before the dark season, dry, salt, jams, saftar and leavens.After the harvest takes hunting season at an important time when we take care of all the exceptional as the mountains give us. When spring and summer returns the stores empty and Fäviken cycle begins anew.

With the setting, the presentation, choice of foods and combinations, and style of preparation this will truly the most unique food experience most of those at our dinner would have had.

After dinner, the staff signed my cookbook the guests hung out in the teepee chatting and smoking cigars until our taxis arrived and took us back to a world where we’d be forced to compare every meal to this one for a long time.

For more on this experience:

Chef’s Table with Faviken

Magic out of Mould

and fall, we harvest what grows on our land and refines them with methods that we rediscovered from our rich cooking tradition or the discovery in seeking to preserve the raw material’s unique properties. We build up stocks before the dark season, dry, salt, jams, saftar and leavens.

After the harvest takes hunting season at an important time when we take care of all the exceptional as the mountains give us. When spring and summer returns the stores empty and Fäviken cycle begins anew.