Scan Magazine | Special Feature | New Nordic Cuisine
Photo: Jakob Fridholm
Photo: Nicho Södling
New Nordic Cuisine: local gastronomy that reveals our identity In the last ten years, a new culinary movement has spread through the world’s top kitchens. And this time it is not the usual suspects of Spain, France or Italy that can claim this taste trend, but Copenhagen, Stockholm and places as far north as Lapland. By Stephanie Brink Harck
Experiencing its very own neorenaissance, New Nordic Cuisine has been making something of a comeback in recent years, the catalyst of which was the increasing popularity of a restaurant on the waterfront of Denmark, Christianshavn. The restaurant, called
Photo: Vastavalo Mustikassa
Noma, is a contraction of Nordic mad (‘mad’ being Danish for food). With panache and inventive thinking, this exclusive restaurant was built with the intention of reinventing Nordic cuisine, with the partnership of founder and Danish chef Claus Meyer and René Redzepi at its core. Their motivation? A simple belief that Scandinavians had become too fond of foreign, ‘exotic’ food. Of course, it is hardly surprising in a globalised world where a cornucopia of culinary cultures can be sampled in one city street. And honestly, who does not enjoy a big, juicy American burger or a mouthwatering Spanish tapas dish with honey-
dew melon? However, the flipside of the coin, according to Claus Meyer, is that Scandinavians have forgotten about the wonders of the ingredients from their own home soil and what traditional Nordic food looked and, more importantly, tasted like. To combat this, in November 2004, Claus Meyer and the Nordic Council of Ministers initiated a gathering of representatives of Nordic gastronomy. A number of top chefs, food writers and other culinary professionals from all over Scandinavia met to discuss what would be the best way to breathe new life into traditional and regional dishes. The result was the New Nordic Food Manifesto.
Nordic cuisine – say what? The manifesto consisted of ten points expressing the values on which a New Nordic Cuisine must be based if it was to make its mark on the world by virtue of its flavours and identity. One of the key Issue 85 | February 2016 | 23