9Views 0Comments
The new Noma? Inside the Michelin-starred Swedish restaurant you’ve probably never heard of
Toward the end of an almost four-hour dinner, though it scarcely feels like it, there’s an invitation to the campfire for an intermezzo course. Guests are offered blankets and berry juice (optionally spiked with white rum, yes please) and huddle around the flames. I’m seated with a group of tall Swedish men celebrating the fortieth anniversary of their annual hunting trip friendship. There’s much mirth and wonder; it’s all a lot more sophisticated than scouting days.
The chefs explain they are making a Danish treat, aebleskiver, filled not with jam but with slow-cooked wild boar and wild, pickled elderberries. The doughnuts are drenched in tallow using a flambadou, a medieval-looking cast-iron grilling cone designed to melt fat quickly.
Back indoors, the dessert is astonishing. A chocolate-ish, but cacao-free, fondant has deer blood as its star ingredient, served with hazelnut praline and malt ice cream. Complex, layered, and elementally delicious. In a nod to nostalgia, dinner finishes with flame-charred, melting woodruff marshmallows.
Then I sleep like a baby in a room just across the river. It’s all very ‘mys’, the Swedish take on ‘hygge’: dark tones, vintage furniture, cosy textiles. Breakfast is at Nordic-chic Fika by Stef. Knystaforsen is inspiring a new kind of food-centric community, reviving the sawmill village.
“We don’t just work with tastebuds, we like to create memories,” says Nicolai. My slow journey through a magical curtain into a Swedish Narnia that’s both very ancient and groundbreakingly modern will stay with me forever.
See knystaforsen.se for bookings and further information.
