Fäviken, Middle-Of-Nowhere Sweden

[edenman]

Fäviken is a 7 hour drive north from Stockholm.  We split the drive in half and spent the night in Mora, which is a cute little lake-side town with not a whole lot going on.  Spending the night somewhere halfway interesting means increasing it to at least 9 hours of driving.  If you decide to drive up from Stockholm, I highly recommend doing a one-way car rental and flying back from í–stersund.  If you fly both ways, you'll either need to arrange a taxi or rent a car.

Fäviken is unlike any restaurant I've ever visited.  It's absolutely the most remote location of a should-be-Michelin-starred restaurant that I know of.  Because it's in the middle of nowhere, they have lodging on-site for diners and breakfast is served the next morning.  On the night we went, they sat 14 guests.  It was an incredible experience.

After checking in, we came down to the porch and I started with an incredible rhubarb-rose negroni.  We then moved inside and had the following:

Flaxseed and vinegar crips, mussel dip

Excellent way to start the meal.  Mussel dip = mussel aoili and it was brilliant.

Jamtlandian broth

Maybe my favorite dish of the night.  Mixed berries from the local province (Jämtland) with a reindeer broth.  Mind-blowing.

Wild trout's roe servied in a crust of pig's blood

It's at this point that I start losing my mind.  I've never tasted anything like this before and am unlikely to ever do so again.

Pig's head, dipped in sourdough and deep-fried, a slice of rhubarb, tarragon salt

Phenomenal.  Deep-fried creamy fatty pork nugget with perfect balance in the toppings.  Served on a toasted branch of some sort.

Salted herring aged for three years, sour cream and rusks

The depth of flavor in the herring.  Unreal.

Slices of cured pork

Ungarnished lardo.  Legit.

Scallop "i skalet ur elden" cooked over burning juniper berries

One of their signature dishes, incredible depth of flavor.

King crab and almost burnt cream

I'm a sucker for crab and dairy.  Texture on the crab was fantastic, and the flavors melded perfectly.

Carefully boiled trout, bog butter and porrige of lichens prepared in lye

This was where the spell started to break for me.  The trout was perfectly cooked but the accompanying flavors missed the mark for me.

Cockles injected with beer

Yes.

Barley pancake filled with sour onions

Little adorable rolled crepes, the tart flavor of the onions perfectly balancing the dough.

A small egg coated in ash, sauce made from dried trout and pickled marigold

Awesome preparation: you pick the sheep-shit ash off the egg and then dip it in the sauce.

Very fresh potatoes boiled with semi decomposed autumn leaves, the good butter

The leaves are left on the ground all winter and then "harvested" in spring and dried.  We're instructed to squeeze the potatoes and put butter on them.  Delicious, but surprising they didn't try to impart any more flavor into them.  It's just potatoes and butter and the slightest hint of the leaves.

Cottage cheese pie, plantain leaf and meadow flowers

Mom's pie crust does not suck.  The flowers and plantain leaf add an herbal and grassy flavor that is a perfect balance.

Mushrooms, raw peas picked 20 minutes ago, stone brambles

It's an interesting idea and most of the flavors are awesome, but raw peas aren't really my thing so that throws off the balance.

Blood bread, moose broth, backfat and onions

Really interesting.  The bread and broth are great.  The onions are perfect.  The backfat was a little boring, maybe just needed some crisping.  Still a great dish.

Pork chop, mushroom and tasty paste

Tasty paste is a 10x reduction of beef broth with vegetables and mushrooms.  It's a perfectly cooked dish but surprisingly minimal for this restaurant, and one of the more disappointing dishes of the night.

Colostrum and blueberries

Holy fuck.  "An edible crisp milk shell filled with creamy colostrum (the first milk produced after an animal has given birth) and blueberry jam" (described better than I can, by this post that looks like a v similar menu to what we had)

Fermented lingonberries, thick cream, sugar, blueberry ice

An amazing pair of bites, refreshing and interesting.

Curdled woodruff milk

Woodruff syrup, curdled milk, ice cream.  Incredible temperature contrast and flavor balance.  Fully back under the spell at this point.

An egg yolk preserved in sugar syrup served on a pile of crumbs made from pine tree bark

Ice cream seasoned with spruce

At this point, I'm just in heaven.  Unfamiliar flavors, interesting texture, brilliant balanced flavors.

Sour milk sorbet, raspberry jam and whisked duck eggs.

The sorbet is churned in the dining room to much attention.  It's a bit gimmicky but who cares: it's delicious.

A wooden box filled with meat pies, raspberries ice, tar pastilles, meadowsweet candy, dried berries, anise seeds coated in crystallized honey and bees wax, smoked toffee, pine resin, cake

Sun kissed berries

I tend to hate these sorts of "hey your dinner is over here's a shit-ton of different one-bite flavors" things, but this was pretty great.

Snus

A relative of chewing tobacco, placed under the upper lip for a while.

Drinks:

Rose-Rhubarb Negroni

Champagne

Fävikens Light Mead, Bengt-Johnny & Jan-Anders, í–ster-í–vsjö

2011 Meursault "En la Barre", Antoine Jobard, Bourgogne

2012 Monzinger Riesling Kabinett, Emrich Schönleber, Nahe

2009 Saumur Champigny, Clos Rougeard, Loire

2011 Eiswein Cuvée, Weinlaubenhof Kracher, Burgenland

Sour Milk Liqueur

Duck Egg Liqueur

Pappy 15yr

It wasn't a perfect meal, but it was damn close.

[edenman]

Additional reading:

http://www.classetouriste.be/faviken-magasinet-restaurant/

http://fergusmiller.com/2013/07/15/faviken-magasinet-2/

http://foodstudio.no/column/a-walk-on-the-wild-side-at-faviken/

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2013/06/faviken-restaurant-sweden/

[Robert Rymarz]

Top two restaurants on my bucket list are Faviken and Etxbarri. Excellent post, and thank you for sharing!

[DonRocks]

 

[Marty L.]

On 8/24/2014 at 3:41 AM, edenman said:

Fäviken is a 7 hour drive north from Stockholm.  We split the drive in half and spent the night in Mora, which is a cute little lake-side town with not a whole lot going on.  Spending the night somewhere halfway interesting means increasing it to at least 9 hours of driving.  If you decide to drive up from Stockholm, I highly recommend doing a one-way car rental and flying back from í–stersund.  If you fly both ways, you'll either need to arrange a taxi or rent a car.

Fäviken is unlike any restaurant I've ever visited.  It's absolutely the most remote location of a should-be-Michelin-starred restaurant that I know of.  Because it's in the middle of nowhere, they have lodging on-site for diners and breakfast is served the next morning.  On the night we went, they sat 14 guests.  It was an incredible experience.

...

Pappy 15yr

It wasn't a perfect meal, but it was damn close.

Perfect?  I dunno -- only 20 spectacular dishes out of 23 or so.

[DonRocks]

3 hours ago, Marty L. said:

Perfect?  I dunno -- only 20 spectacular dishes out of 23 or so.

It's because the Pappy was only 15 yrs.