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has been so narrow all this time, it has forced u
s to cure and preserve. We don’t have a choice. Otherwise it would have been four servings of turnip and three leek dishes. Before you started Gastrologik, you both worked in France, what did you bring back from that time? A: We worked at a whole different, much higher, level. To be able to work at those three star-restaurants was fantastic. It was a new world. We were also beginning to understand the veneration for, and to respect, the raw produce. There is some sort of basic attitude there about how you treat the produce. Just the fact that such a large portion of the people go to buy their groceries at the local farmers market during weekends. That connection to the producer that you get, not just chefs, but everyone. For me that was an important part. When did you have the idea that you wanted to work seasonally with local produce in Sweden? J: That was probably when we moved back home. From seeing what people did abroad. There was no one who did Swedish cuisine on this level. There were those who did Swedish meatballs and herring, but no one did any sort of take on fine dining in Swedish. I suppose it has become more normal today to work in seasons in fine dining. A: It’s probably more healthy today. Many do it to some degree. When it was the most hyped, everyone was doing it, but they didn’t really know why they did it. Everyone jumped on the train because that was the popular thing to do. But today everyone has incorporated some aspects of it. J: I would like to add that the New Nordic Cuisine has this approach. It has been a trend. But it has already peaked, and that has never been the reason why we did it in the beginning. We did it because we believed in it. We thought it was fun and that it was the logical thing to do. But at the same time I think many people followed the trend because it was popular, and now they probably do some other trendy thing today. But you continue believing in this idea, despite it not being as trendy anymore? J: With my hand on my heart, I know how to cook other types of food, but I probably cannot reach the same level by cooking in another way. We have worked this way for ten years now. I’ve never been at one restaurant for that long before. A: This is what we are. To be able to create at this level without a framework, that would have been really difficult. Even having access to whatever you want, whenever you want. That would have been difficult. About Anton and Jacob Jacob Holmström grew up in a restaurant environment. His father ran a restaurant, not unlike the one that Jacob himself runs today. The choice to become a chef was simple, but Jacob Holmström hasn’t just followed in his father’s footsteps. He has surpassed them. Anton Bjuhr on the other hand didn’t realise that he wanted to work with food until some time after high school, when he took a job at a simple roadside restaurant. They met when they were both newly employed at Gothenburg restaurant Linnea. Since then, they have been working together, from Gothenburg, to Oslo and then on to France where they worked in three star kitchens. In 2011 they moved back to Sweden and that’s when they decided to open up their own first restaurant – Gastrologik. 15