Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Niklas Ekstedt in the kitchen of his namesake restaurant in Stockholm Helen Pe Niklas Ekstedt has some thoughts on the fire-dining trend that’s blazing around the world. “The use of charcoal,” says the Swedish chef when asked what annoys him about the way other cooks have hopped on the bandwagon. “High-end restaurants are using compressed briquettes with chemicals.
The majority do that. It’s super fake. “It’s strange to buy expensive products like wagyu or expensive fish and cook them on this charcoal,” he continues.
“Fire should be an ingredient.” Ekstedt, who holds a Michelin star at his namesake restaurant in central Stockholm, is both a purist and a tinkerer. His kitchen has no gas or electricity.
He sets birch, hay, seaweed, juniper and ecological Swedish charcoal aflame, insisting that each one imbues different flavors. Some of the fires in Ekstedt's kitchen Courtesy of the restaurant In fact, it’s not about the flames as much as the tools. Ekstedt is a “technique-driven restaurant that works with fire.
We are not a fire restaurant. The open wood fire is not the important thing. It’s the technique.
” And so he nerds out both on his flammable ingredients and on his cooking implements and processes. Some 15 years ago, “a lot of Scandinavian cooking, the New Nordic cooking with Noma, was exploding,” he explains. “They were all talking about how product-driven Scandinavia is and how new Sc.
