In an age when chefs are regularly compared to artists and philosophers, Magnus Nilsson is among the world’s most renowned. But is the simple act of cooking ever worthy of such veneration?
Magnus Nilsson, the 32-year-old chef at Fäviken, Sweden’s premier fine-dining restaurant, is not fond of repeating himself, but there is one sentence he repeats with such frequency and resolute force that it takes on the quality of a koan: “Do it once, perfectly.”
He says it when observing that one of his chefs has failed to place the dollop of burnt cream in the same place on every dish, or when explaining why he paid so much for his elaborate recycling and composting facility, which has reduced the restaurant’s waste to practically nothing.
Fäviken is at the vanguard of restaurants whose food is also talked about as an expression of moral values
This is an age when a chef is required to be someone who has opinions and participates in a public space
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