Foraging, birch wood fires and biodynamic meals: Swedish chefs take green eating to the next level
In the land of smorgasbord, organic and biodynamic are the watchwords as sustainable dining grows in popularity and restaurants source ingredients that are locally produced, or which they even grow themselves
It’s no wonder Stockholm is a veritable tour de force in sustainable dining. If you scan the dining scene in the city, it is evident that most chefs make a concerted attempt to use local ingredients, while some take it further by sourcing biodynamic and organic ingredients.
“We work with local and seasonal products, but for us it is also important to see how it reacts with the open fire,” says Swedish TV celebrity chef Niklas Ekstedt, who cooks ancient recipes exclusively on live fire and birch wood at his eponymous restaurant, Ekstedt.
The lanky chef also taps into the finds of forager Nikki Sjölund, who visits the restaurant twice a week to deliver picks from a forest 20 minutes south of Stockholm. “At this time of the year it is all about fresh leaves and edible flowers,” he says.
Björn Frantzén, chef-owner of the city’s newly-crowned three Michelin-starred restaurant, Frantzén, buys almost all of his organic and biodynamic berries, herbs and vegetables from two farms, located one and three hours respectively away from Stockholm.
In spring, he pays tribute to Swedish terroir by way of a dish named “bitter and pickled greens”, which puts the spotlight on 20 different types of local vegetables that are either roasted, pickled or deep-fried and served as a salad alongside whipped buttermilk topped with herbed pesto. With this salad, he also fields a tiny dish of crunchy fish scales and a cup of herbed fennel tea perfumed with citruses of lemongrass and lemon balm.
On the northern part of Djurgården, also dubbed Stockholm’s greenest island, sits a farm that belongs to Magnus Ek, chef-owner of the two Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant Oaxen Krog (and the more casual Oaxen Slip). A prominent front runner in the farm-to-fork movement, Ek says most of the vegetables served at Oaxen Krog, such as May’s yield of lovage and rhubarb, are grown on his own farm, while the majority of his meats are sourced from Norrland, the northern part of Sweden.