The New Nordic cuisine

GO FOOD

A culinary movement defined by nature and culture

“So this little ball of depressing represents the past of Norwegian food,” said chef Christopher Haatuft as he lovingly set down a drab bite of smoked mackerel butter on rye-pumpernickel bread.

“This one is the future, the way it should be,” he said, pointing to a snowy pile of sugar-and-salt-cured halibut, garnished with horseradish shavings and baby alfalfa.

“And this last one is just for fun,” he added, a tiny Scandinavian “shawarma” of potato flatbread wrapped around pickled herring. It’s a nod to the late-night street food Haatuft, 37, knew when he was a teenager here, thrashing around in the punk scene — and a joke about Norway’s inexorable, traditional diet of potatoes and herring.

In three bites at Lysverket, Haatuft’s restaurant here, he conveys everything he wants the food of Norway to be: nostalgic, sustainable, creative, delicious and witty. He’s a Bergen native, but his mother is American. Dual citizenship allowed him to spend two years in ambitious kitchens in the United States, like the ones at Per Se, Alinea and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, after he completed culinary training in Europe.

When he returned to Bergen in 2012 to open his own place, he first had to figure out his relationship with New Nordic cuisine — an inescapable label for modern Scandinavian chefs. Its commitment to local, pure and beautiful food has proved to be more than a trend: it is a durable international movement, led by chefs like René Redzepi of Noma and Christian Puglisi of Relae in Copenhagen, Gunnar Gislason of Agern in New York and Esben Holmboe Bang of Maaemo in Oslo (the first restaurant in Norway to earn three Michelin stars).

Many of the New Nordic chefs are guided by solemn manifestoes about nature and culture. They often restrict themselves to Scandinavian ingredients, eliminating tomatoes, olive oil and peaches in favour of elderflower, sea buckthorn and pine needles. (The last, Haatuft said, is part of “the eternal Nordic quest for acid that isn’t lemon.”)

Since he is the opposite of solemn, he coined a new term for the food at Lysverket: neo-fjordic.

“At first it was a joke,” he said. “But the fjords are what make Norway different, and that’s what I want my food to be.”

MANY

THINGS are different about Norway’s geography, most of which make Haatuft’s work more

“But the fjords are what make Norway different, and that’s what I want my food to be.” CHRISTOPHER HAATUFT NEW NORDIC CUISINE CHEF

Anders Tveite, left, at his pig farm, which specializes in a Hungarian breed and is a source of pork for the restaurant of Christopher Haatuft, left, in Voss, Norway.

Christopher Haatuft, chef at his restaurant Lysverket, with scallops from the fjord near Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. Haatuft coined a new term for the food at his restaurant: neo-fjordic.