Daniel Berlin is back

For a few weeks, chef Daniel Berlin has been, at least trying to, under the radar, run a test of his new food and wine bar. It will complement his new fine-dining restaurant, Vyn, seating 30 guests and a hotel of 15 rooms, opening this October. He’s not made a move on social media but the word is getting around in Skåne, Sweden’s most southerly region.

So much that I myself had to hop on a five-hour train ride from Stockholm to see what was going on.

“I thought we’d welcome just a few guests for a soft opening so the service staff and kitchen could ease into the job,” says a seemingly surprised Berlin.

On the contrary, the parking lot on the hill overlooking the sea in the village of Brantevik is packed with cars and every chair in and outside of the food and wine bar, seating around 60, is taken. It’s evident that Berlin’s comeback is very much anticipated, by locals, foodies and chef colleagues.

“Daniel Berlin has achieved something nearly impossible: being a talented and humble chef who treats his ingredients and recipes with respect. Simultaneously, he maintains the same humility towards fellow chefs and his surroundings, making him an exceptionally unique individual,” says chef Niklas Ekstedt of one-Michelin-starred Ekstedt in Stockholm and Ekstedt at the Yard in London.

It was in the nearby village Skåne Tranås that Berlin – awarded ‘Chef of the Year (Kockarnas Kock) no less than four times by a chef jury in Sweden – ran his previous restaurant for 10 years, winning it a Michelin star in 2016 and a second just two years later. His ingredients were hyper-local, sourced from neighbouring farmers that he worked closely with. In the later years, the chef employed a gardener who developed and ran several kitchen gardens outside the restaurant. To eat in Daniel Berlin restaurant was to taste a piece of county Österlen. It was also a destination restaurant, just like chef Magnus Nilsson’s now-closed Fäviken up in Jämtland in the north of Sweden, but it didn’t have hotel rooms of its own. But at the beginning of summer 2020 Berlin announced he was closing down the restaurant, less than two years after getting his second star.

“It was probably one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made,” he says, then pauses: ” And in hindsight, I wish I’d made it sooner.”

The restaurant back then was fully booked and didn’t fare too badly during the pandemic, due to the Swedish government’s no-lockdown policy. But, Berlin’s wife of two years, Anna, had been diagnosed with cancer, and the chef felt an urge to take time off to be with her and their young twin boys.

“The prognosis was looking better at that time and Anna was out running and working out again. She was coming back to life. But, unexpectedly, she got really rapidly ill after Christmas that year. She passed in the spring,” says the chef.

Two and a half years later, we’re standing here amidst fields of flowing crops in Sweden’s breadbasket county, Skåne, and Berlin smiles. “Her best friend texted me the other day after having been here to see the place, saying that Anna would have been so proud over Vyn and what we’ve accomplished here.”

The location is special, with a view overlooking the Baltic Sea and Danish island Bornholm on a clear day. As a side bonus for travelling foodies, it’s just one hour and 40 minutes drive from Copenhagen, over the bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden – Öresundsbron.

“We had a lot of guests coming our way from Copenhagen at the previous restaurant so we hope we can again lure people over the strait,” says Berlin as we walk from the food and wine bar to the main restaurant.

It’s still a building site and no one except the workers are allowed in. I bargain with Daniel to make an exception as I’ve made the long journey from the capital and he gives in when I offer to impound my mobile phone, meaning no photos. The chef explains how he wants it to be perfect when welcoming guests on the – yet – secret date in October.

At first, we walk through a corridor with hotel rooms to the right – when booking a table in Vyn’s main dining room guests will have first dibs on them. Upstairs is a private dining room with its own kitchen. “I really missed not being able to offer this at the old place but it was too small,” says Berlin as we wobble up the ladders.

Downstairs we see the kitchen next to a big airy lounge which somehow now, in its naked form with an exposed ceiling that’ll stay, resembles Asador Etxebarri in the Basque Country. And maybe there are similarities in how the two chefs, Victor Arguinzoniz and Berlin, work so closely with local producers.

“As of now we work with around 70 producers and counting,” says the chef, adding that so much has happened since he closed, now there's several new farmers in the area.

The bakery Gamla Bageriet is a key player, as is biodynamic farm Arken in Ravlunda and Anna Berlin’s uncle will provide the eggs plus some lamb.

“Both Vyn restaurants work very circular, produce is shared in between but takes different shapes and forms in terms of cuts depending on where you consume it,” says Berlin. The tasting menu will hold around 14-15 servings and all his previous signature dishes, like baked celeriac or beetroot amped up in a zillion different textures, are gone.

“I wanted to start fresh on a clean slate,” explains Berlin, who's backed up by Tom Swanberg as Head Chef, previously of Oslo’s Maaemo.

“We’ll be cooking close to the guest. Warm food, you know? Our guests should feel that it’s cooked just for them.”

Berlin says he wants service to be memorable with the same personal feel. He tells me how he was inspired by dining on his own at Eleven Madison Park the day after the Manhattan institution by Daniel Humm got to the top of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list back in 2017.

“I was there as a solo diner, nobody, in a room full of all the big chef names, just before flying back home. An hour into the dinner, then owner Will Guidara, comes and asks me to follow him into the kitchen. So I did, and as I entered like one hundred chefs stopped their work and greeted me. I was served a nibble and shown to a temporary shooting gallery where at the end bit they had painted a duck, a cow and a fish. Somehow they’d found out I was a hunter and thought it’d be a fun thing to do to ask me to shoot my own main course,” remembers Berlin.

The extreme service element, which is also featured in Will Guidara’s book, Unreasonable Hospitality, stuck with the Swedish chef. That to him is more luxury than scoops of caviar atop a dish, he says.

”The experience in Eleven Madison Park was life-changing service. I also want our guests to leave here feeling like that.”