Star of the north

How Magnus Nilsson draws on the Scandinavian landscape for his celebrated cooking

Adark curtain of cloud is slowly coming down over the landscape – a still lake, pine trees – even though it is only 3.30pm. It is just possible to see the group of buildings – some the familiar red barns with which the Swedish countryside is littered, others slightly grander Gustavianstyle houses – that make up Fäviken Magasinet in the distance. One of the most celebrated restaurants in the world, Fäviken is more than tucked away: getting here requires a fight from Stockholm to Ostersund, then an hour and a half ’s taxi ride (I left home at 3.30am to reach it in time for dinner). But people come, from everywhere, as Magnus Nilsson knew they would.

Nilsson, 32, is one of the most innovative chefs working today. He was a grade-A student at school but opted for a cooking career instead of studying marine biology. When he talks about food, it is clear why. He has the most vivid food memories, all imbued with the textures, colours, smell and light of the countryside where he grew up. ‘It is autumn, probably moose-hunting season. The colours in the trees are almost supernaturally bright,’ he writes in his frst book, Fäviken. ‘The air in the kitchen is full of the scents rising from the stove and what Grandma is cooking. I’m four years old, possibly fve… The entire moment can be condensed into one phrase: rektun mat – real food.’ Shortly after his 15th birthday, Nilsson wrote a letter to himself setting out the next 20 years. In it was the promise that he would run the best restaurant in the world. He still reads it for inspiration.

As soon as he had a bit of cooking experience in Sweden, Nilsson left to explore Paris and got a job at L’Astrance, the small, ambitious Michelinstarred restaurant run by Pascal Barbot. The relentless perfectionism there refned Nilsson’s aims. When Nilsson came to Fäviken it was a ‘moose and fondue’ kind of place on a huge estate in Jämtland, the area of Sweden he comes from. He never intended to stay, but eventually the owners, now his business partners, persuaded him to take on the restaurant and shape it.

The resulting restaurant takes only 24 diners, and everyone stays the night. You are surrounded by log-cabin cosiness – wood, wool, candles, fres

– but it is not cute. The tables are sleek; green leaves sit in plain glass vases; the ceramics are earthy. ‘Sometimes I stand in the stairwell and listen to the guests having a good time,’ Nilsson tells me. ‘The food is the main thing, but if they enjoy the place as well that is a bonus.’

A key feature of Nordic cookery is that it puts the outside – pine forests, lakes and seas – on the plate. The fresh scent of dill, the chill of sour cream, the smokiness of cured fsh – these ingredients are stamped with Scandinavia. But at Fäviken the transition from land and sea to plate is even clearer. Yes, everything on the menu is shot, grown, cured and fermented by local farmers or the Fäviken team, but nothing prepares you for the experience of eating a landscape that you get here: the ‘porridge’ with seeds, fermented carrot and tiny leaves served with game broth ‘fltered through moss’; the wild duck with fermented beans from the local lupin plant.

To say that Nilsson cooks ‘local, seasonal food’ is like saying Ted Hughes wrote quite good poetry about gardens. It is easy to laugh at it from afar – the seriousness of the approach – but when you smell the moss on that broth, you get the point. Nilsson has invigorated the area around Fäviken and, along with René Redzepi of Noma in Denmark, has made

A fjord in the Faroe Islands, photographed by Nilsson in 2013, while he was researching The Nordic Cookbook