This has taken me a while to write, because it has taken a while to process. On Valentine ’s Day, my wife Nina and I made a pilgrimage to Faviken Magazinet, up in the wilds of Jämtland, Sweden. Now Faviken has had a goodly amount of exposure, mostly thanks to Chef’s Table on Netflix, and I confess that’s what inspired us to go.
What I didn’t expect was that it would fundamentally change how I look at food, forever.
I’ve started, or tried to start, this review a few times, and always failed. Where to start? What to say? The truth is that nothing I say stands up to the experience, and for the first time in many years as a writer I found myself at a loss for words. It was only when chatting with Edmond Wong, one of our tablemates and a visionary foodie filmmaker that I realized the truth.
The experience of Faviken changed me.
The food was sublime, of course, but that wasn’t it. I remember something I wrote when studying anthropology in Montreal, and realized that my studies had fundamentally changed how I saw social interactions. I’d noticed that after the advent of ATMs (this was the 90’s after all), people lined up differently – the second person in the line left a couple of meters between them and the first person, regardless of what the first person was doing. I noted in my field notes “Dammit Louise, you’ve turned me into a social scientist!” because from that point on, there was no going back.
And I can’t go back from Faviken, nor do I want to.
What we were served, how we were greeted, the entire atmosphere was something different. I was challenged, inspired, confused and delighted. I met new, wonderful people, and had an experience that can’t be repeated. It was ineffable and sublime.
So, here I am reduced to writing a non-review of a restaurant. There’s nothing I can say about the food, because my skills are inadequate. But as a point in time, an experience, a moment in my life, I can speak.
From the glitter on the snow as we entered to see Magnus and his team waiting for us, the smell of the wood fires and the innumerable stars in the inkblack sky, to the holistic experience of eating with twig, fingers, and shell, to the banter and backtalk from the chef and our server, everything was perfection. Not perfection in the sterile, mathematical sense of white gloves and rich linen, but one of pure being. We were there, then, and we were alive, eating and drinking with oldnew friends in our own little microcosm. In a way, we were the audience and the performers in a gastronomic theatre that left us speechless – both from the experience, and the plentiful, amazing wine.
And now, living in the real world, my perception is different. I can’t always eat like that, and I’m not sure I’d want to. I don’t have the vision of a Magnus, nor the pretension of a professional critic. But I go on now with a different view of a wider world, with new friends, and the knowledge that in the north of Sweden there is something unique, and for a moment, I was a part of it.
And for that, I will be forever grateful.
