Magnus Nilsson: ‘The world doesn’t need another Fäviken’

After a five-year break, Swedish chef Nilsson is set to head back into the kitchen. But his new restaurant won’t do fine dining.

We all love a good comeback story. And this one might be more anticipated than others, as it seemed for a while it wasn’t going to happen.

Back in 2019 the global foodie community was shaken up by the news that Fäviken was closing. The restaurant in northern Sweden’s Jämtland county held two Michelin stars and its chef Magnus Nilsson was part of that clique paving the way for the Nordic kitchen. And what’s more, he’d been portrayed on the first ever season of Chef’s Table, launched back in 2015.

So, why quit when you’re at the height of your career?

“In every strategic way, this is not a wise decision,” Nilsson told the Los Angeles Times in May 2019, deciding to give no other interviews that year. “But what’s the reason that someone runs a restaurant like Fäviken? Because you want to; it’s entirely driven by passion.”

Nilsson had woken up one day and didn’t want to go to work. He’d lost the passion that was his fuel and instead of leaving the kitchen to be run by others, the chef decided that this was the end. Fäviken went out with a bang, one last party that people who were there still rave about: they invited everyone who’d ever worked in Fäviken during its 10 years and some 30 regular guests to a no limit party.

“I love to throw a good party! The staff got to compile a list of chefs they wanted to cook for the evening and then everyone of those got a time slot to deliver their food,” Nilsson remembers.

That included American BBQ from Holy Smoke and Sweden’s most hyped pizzeria, Lilla Napoli. Every half hour a new band or an artist would take to the stage up until rock band The Hives finished it all off. Nilsson woke up happy and hungover the day after.

“At first I thought I was going to go on and do a new upscaled Fäviken, like Noma 2.0,” he says as he jumps into a car driving through the apple orchards of his county Skåne farm.

“It was going to be a big fine-dining restaurant and I was looking around at premises. But then I just felt regret. I was so over Fäviken, but the restaurant I thought I was going to open would just have been the same. As a chef, you’re not so unique that you can create something which is not an evolution from your last project.”

After the closing of Fäviken in December 2019, Magnus, his wife Tove, and their four children had relocated from Jämtland to Skåne in the south of the country and bought an 18-hectare apple farm, Axelstorps fruktodling. Life was starting to look very different from running a fine-dining kitchen with a handful of daily covers some 1000 kilometers-plus up north.

“I decided that the world and myself didn’t need a second iteration of a restaurant that had already been done,” he says.

Instead, Nilsson left the kitchen and went onto a role as Director of Mad Academy in Copenhagen and later as Director-General of Food Planet Prize, which annually rewards two million USD to an initiative making substantial future change with a food system project, a position he currently holds.

Suddenly, Nilsson had become an office guy and a part-time apple farmer, and he quite enjoyed it.There were always people asking about the chef who tempted global super diners to the woods of Jämtland, in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. His peers opened their own shops in the county. And the charcuterie factory, Undersåkers, which produced sandwich toppings for Fäviken’s breakfast service and a showstopping crafted hot dog (the uttermost Swedish street food) was kept by Fäviken’s owner, the Brummer family, and is still open today.

Nilsson settled in at the farm in Skåne. The region has, in recent years, become Sweden’s hottest gastronomic destination; rich in agriculture, home to many destination restaurants, and connected to Denmark via a bridge allowing you to get over from Copenhagen in just 40 minutes. Some Swedish food writers have already left Stockholm to relocate here, a cluster of natural wine importers have become Skåne locals, and others in the food and beverage industry spend summer holidays in the region.

It was also here that another chef colleague recently made his return, namely Daniel Berlin, who opened his restaurant Vyn last year, immediately winning two Michelin stars this summer.

“There’s no other part in Sweden where you can grow stuff like in Skåne,” says Nilsson as he drives by endless crop fields.

He lives a 10-minute bicycle ride outside the center of Båstad, a coastal town on the Bjäre peninsula, that’s known for its summer tennis tournament. The town’s old inn, Hjorten, had been functioning for 120 years and someone tipped off Nilsson it was for sale. He was sure he wasn’t interested and six months went by before a chef friend rang and told him to at least go and have a look.

“It was a lot bigger than what you can see from the outside, it’s actually 1000 square meters. I immediately felt that the building had that little extra something,” Nilsson remembers.

He bought it and decided to do everything differently this time.

To start with, he’s not alone. On this project acclaimed chef Frida Nilsson (no relation), most recently operation and development head chef of the hotel group ESS, will join as part owner.

The restaurant, named Furuhem, is set to open in the spring of 2025. It seats 60 guests and will open all day, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a farm-to-table restaurant aimed at fulfilling conscious dining with fruit and vegetables from Nilsson’s own cultivations and produce from nearby farmers and a bit beyond. “As long as we have a relationship and an understanding, that’s the core foundation of getting the best produce,” he says.

He’ll be working service, scheduled “as a regular cook,” three days a week.

“It’s opposite to how I used to do it. But I believe in a team effort this time,” he says.

A bakery is also in the making, something you have to have if you run a hotel with a great breakfast, according to Nilsson who’s also author of The Nordic Baking Book, published by Phaidon in 2018. He’s teamed up with Felicia Garellick, who’ll be Furuhem’s head baker and also join as a third partner.

Furuhem will be able to host 32 guests with its 16 hotel rooms.

“It’s a place open for everyone, the local people of Båstad will come in and do lunches with us. I’m now more interested in a restaurant that’s part of the local community than with Fäviken for instance, that was very excluding to a lot of people. I mean, how many people from county Jämtland did we have as guests? Ok, there were some locals through the years, but how often could they come and have a tasting menu?”

Will this new concept be confusing for your regulars who’re Michelin Guide-loving ultra foodies, I ask him?

“I think so, yes. But that only confirms to me I’m doing the right thing. I don’t feel for fine dining any longer. The idea of having many restaurants with my name on them, scattered across the globe doesn’t excite me. I’m more interested in qualitative craftsmanship."

Does that mean you’ll never go back to fine dining?

“I’m never closing that door. But it won’t happen at this address, that’s for sure.”