Fäviken is in the middle of no where, and the camera sees the icy and snowy hillsides, the cloudy lakeside, and the desolate wilderness. The freedom of being close to nature is outside the theme of food, but it makes the candlelight in the cabin and the food on the table even more warm.
UPDATE: The sad news is that Fäviken will be closed until December 2019 and is currently fully booked. Artist Chef says he's off to find a new direction in life...
The Chef's Table is probably my favorite documentary. Food Porn is naturally addicting, in addition to the camera, soundtrack, framing, and the advancement of the script, Wei Wei tells how a person becomes a great chef because of persistence and love, which makes people addicted to life other than food.
Imagine a barren northern Europe, and it is not in the center of European food culture. It should be the end of the world where you can spend half a year of winter by huddling down and storing a large bucket of high-fat food. But about episode 7 of the Swedish restaurant Fäviken, I've watched it maybe ten times.
Fäviken is in the middle of no where, and the camera sees the icy and snowy hillsides, the cloudy lakeside, and the desolate wilderness. The freedom of being close to nature is outside the theme of food, but it makes the candlelight in the cabin and the food on the table even more warm.
Chef Magnus Nilsson has a slightly greasy face after getting fat in middle age, and his long messy hair is more like a down-to-earth artist. In the presentation of the picture, he has a razor-sharp dedication to the processing of food and the details of the kitchen. Of course, this is also a necessary condition for becoming a chef of one of the top ten restaurants in the world. As soon as he opens his mouth to express his views, the essence of his idealism is completely revealed. As a young man, he knew he would be a chef for the rest of his life, working in the kitchens of restaurants in Paris and Stockholm, but making the soulless dishes on the menu made him so miserable that he gave up his career at one point.
Don't do what you don't like, pursue downright pureness. Talented and ideal people often expect to complete their life trajectory in this way. Although they often end in middle-aged depression, if they are lucky, their talents and opportunities can burst into the great light of fairy tales in the world.
Fäviken is located on a farm 750 kilometers northwest of Stockholm, in the mountains of Sweden, very close to the Norwegian border. We arrived at the beginning of October, the late autumn and early winter in Sweden, and the snow season has not yet arrived, but the temperature is already very low. There is still a little autumn color on the road, all the way is lakes, grasslands, forests, primitive and unmodified beauty.
As Sweden's number one restaurant in the world's top ten, Fäviken's reservations are very tight, and it basically needs to be more than three months in advance. Yes, in order to grab an October dinner, we set an alarm clock to remind us.
Because in the wilderness, there are no other residents in the vicinity of ten kilometers, let alone supermarkets and hotels. Fäviken itself has an accommodation service that can be booked with dinner. The experience of staying in the chalet is unexpectedly good, clean and tidy and warm, the details are beautiful, the bathroom is shared by several, but craft beer and sausages are provided for use in the bath.
We arrived at noon. Before we checked in, we took a walk in the nearby meadows, lakes, and forests. The forests were full of wild berries and mushrooms. The farm had its own fields and raised sika deer. The employees of lingon berry are completely self-sufficient restaurants based on local materials as described in the documentary.
If you are a real food lover, you will probably understand that the real food is the local crops, which is the result of nature. Fäviken's food is presented with a modern aesthetic, using local ingredients and improved Nordic original preparations.
Dinner starts at seven o'clock, and the thirty-course banquet, strictly speaking, starts with the appetizer downstairs before the meal. Although there will be a waiter explaining the ingredients in detail before each dish, but the words are too complicated, 80% of them can't understand, just eat happily.
For each of the above dishes, a young sommelier from Italy will recommend red and white sprinkles or sparkling wine, and explain how the smell matches each dish. In addition, between each dish, there is bread and butter served, so I almost rolled my eyes.
However, the next step is the huge dessert.
The food portion of each dish is very small, but it can last until half-dead after eating. Fortunately, I lived in a sheltered cabin, and I could go to bed and fall asleep while holding my stomach half-drunk.
If I were to describe the four-month wait and fourteen-hour round-trip flight to eat this dinner, I think it’s more of a ritualistic pilgrimage experience.
You need to book a date, take off, and drive through the forest, lake and countryside. The tranquility and solemnity of northern Europe accumulates emotions in the early stage, and then finally culminates in a dinner party in Fäviken where details are pursued to the extreme.
Being away from the city and human society, aside from any other fancy entertainment, shopping to grab your attention, the food is the only central experience. Just like a martial arts conference of top masters, people come from all over the world just to watch a top performance with food as the only focus, so they will have extraordinary and profound feelings.
You will feel that food is a bridge between people and nature. The food you eat comes from nearby, they grow quietly in the lakes and forests around you, and then they are combined into an unparalleled feast, visual and palate.
Because it's a ceremony, it's worth it.
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