Chef Magnus Nilsson has announced the closure of his celebrated Swedish restaurant Fäviken Magasinet. Its final service will be on 14 December.
Since taking the reins of the Fäviken kitchen, the 35-year-old chef has notched up two Michelin stars and a 67th place on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. He shot to mainstream prominence after featuring in Netflix’s documentary series Chef’s Table and Anthony Bourdain’s The Mind of a Chef. This morning, he took to Instagram to reveal the news about Fäviken’s closure.
“I have been the chef here for more than 10 years now and it has been amazing. Unusually early in my career I was presented with the opportunity to develop and operate an ambitious restaurant in a way that most chefs can only dream about. I have had the chance to work alongside the best team I could have wished for, cooking for the most fantastic guests (mostly),” he wrote on Instagram.
“When I am done here I am going to spend time with my family, reflect, fish, garden, write, rest and get fit, both physically and mentally.
“I am not going to lie, I am a little bit tired after all this time pushing the development of the restaurant forward.”
Nilsson chose to announce the news after the 24-seat restaurant’s coming season was fully booked – he wants Fäviken’s final months to be business as usual.
“[I hope] people come here to enjoy Fäviken and what we have to offer, not because it will end soon, but because it is a magnificent restaurant experience right now. We have truly never been better,” he said.
There’s a culinary mystique surrounding Fäviken. For one, it’s set deep in central Sweden, in the sparsely populated province of Jämtland, and occupies a hunting lodge in the wilderness. A typical meal at Fäviken might include scallops smoked over juniper branches, or wild trout roe served in a crust of dried pig’s blood. Ingredients are foraged, baked or butchered on site, before being transformed into one of 30 courses of the restaurant’s mammoth dégustation.
Since taking the lead in the kitchen, Nilsson has published three cookbooks, including the inimitable The Nordic Cookbook – a 768-page tome chronicling the recipes, culinary history and cooking techniques of the Nordic region. (Upon its release, much was made of the recipes featuring whale, puffin and reindeer blood, to Nilsson’s chagrin. “If they’ve actually read it, they’re like, ‘This is pretty common food in here – I didn’t know that you guys ate that’,” he said at the time.)
In the introduction to his Fäviken cookbook, Nilsson writes, “Fäviken Magasinet is going to be one of the world’s great restaurants. Perhaps not in the traditional way, but in its own way.”
And having built a sterling reputation as one of the world’s most groundbreaking chefs, he’s closing this chapter of his career on his own terms.