Discover the Tenants of New Nordic Cuisine in Nordic by Nature

09/2018 food & beverages

"Luxury in the world of gastronomy when we started the journey was all about truffles, foie gras, caviar, hand-ironed table clothes, fine dining for the few," writes Claus Meyer in a personal essay included in our new book Nordic by Nature. “We dreamed of redefining luxury. We felt that humble ingredients and a naked table could somehow represent luxury as well”.

Claus Henriksen of Dragsholm Slot in Odsherred, Denmark, picks wild hemp from the surrounding fields near the Slotskøkkenet castle in which he works

Heine Rynkeby Knudsen, head chef of Ulo on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, forages on the mossy cliffs of Greenland, where he has resided since 2016

Poul Andrias Ziska leads the kitchen at KOKS on the Faroe Islands in between Denmark and Iceland, which features freshly-harvested seaweed and kelp on the menu

There is a sense of resourcefulness and unconventional creativity at the backbone of Nordic cuisine: in a beautiful but often harsh environment where fruits and vegetables are often scarce, a new generation of Danish chefs are known for living off the land, sea, and coast year round. The summers are short and the winters are long, but these gastronomers pair a taste for creativity with an adventurous spirit that dates back to the Vikings.

Heine Rynkeby Knudsen hauls large fish from the local waters. At Ulo, Knudsen often cooks with the native fauna of Greenland: reindeer, muskox, mollusks, and crustaceans

Grilled white asparagus with poached organic egg, melted Arla Unika Havgus cheese, and Rossini Gold selection caviar as cooked by Mette and Rainer Gassner at Ti Trin Ned in Fredericia, Denmark

“We wanted to emphasize seasonality and restore the link between cooking and nature, and we wanted food to be compatible with healthiness and sustainability,” Meyer concludes. Indeed, the ethos of the new Nordic cuisine is encompassed by the name of the renowned restaurant Meyer opened with chef René Redzepi in 2003: