Here are five of the best field-to-fork restaurants in Sweden’s southern region, Skåne…
Daniel Berlin, Skåne Tranås
Foodies flock to Daniel Berlin’s yellow-brick restaurant in Skåne Tranås. There are only 15 seats at this intimate restaurant, and tables are often booked months in advance, but it’s worth timing your trip around a slot at this remarkable little spot.
The eponymous chef serves mainly vegetable dishes, elevating the region’s bountiful produce to Noma-like levels of sophistication. Contemporary plates include lobster propped neatly on garden turnip and lovage, fire-cooked celeriac served in a celeriac broth with celery oil and Västerbotten cheese, and a little cylinder of roe nestled in a plate of quail’s eggs. Although Daniel centres his dishes around vegetables picked from his own garden, there’s also plenty of game on the menu during the hunting season; from wild boar to deer shot by Daniel himself.
Lyran, Malmö
At this neighbourhood restaurant, on a leafy corner of Folkets Park in Malmö, the chefs work with ingredients from Skåne’s impressive natural larder such as ‘funny’ cucumbers, pickled elderflower, smoky birch sap, beach roses and Swedish cantaloupe melons to create a clever succession of dishes.
“Now we’re going to embrace you with the forest of Sweden”, says owner and head chef, Jörgen, as he steps out of his open kitchen and sets down a plate of white mushrooms in mushroom dashi with fermented elderflower and chewy pine nuts. He describes another dish as “fire” – rainbow trout roe that pops in the mouth with dried black olives, homegrown tomatoes and orange marigold petals.
For dessert, sea buckthorn is whizzed into a sharp, citrussy sorbet and topped with roasted white chocolate crumb and mascarpone from La Treccia, a Danish dairy across the Oresund bridge in Copenhagen.
Even the aperitifs are field-to-glass here – Jörgen’s wife puts a Scånian twist on her negronis with Lyran’s crowberry liqueur. This intense liquid is mixed with Campari and gin then pre-bottled and served by the centilitre. We suggest ordering the full 4cl, served in a pretty tea glass.
Hörte Brygga, Skivarp
It doesn’t get much more field-to-fork than this cute seaside restaurant on Skåne’s wild southern coast. Chef Robert Hägg creates dishes from whatever the area’s farmers drop off that day. This could be duck with fermented strawberries and smoky birch sap reduced on an open flame, cured pike perch with smoked potato purée and liquoricey bronze fennel flowers, or rosehip sorbet with salt-roasted almonds covered in snowy shavings of frozen caramel and roquefort. Bag one of 10 seats around the kitchen table and join farmers and local producers, who bring whatever they’ve been growing to a pot luck-style dinner.
In an adjoining smokehouse, Robert cooks the whole animal and works his way through the cuts for the lunchtime “basket special” – depending on where you are in the queue you could get beef fillet or lamb shoulder, pork belly or goat leg, all served (as the name suggests) in a basket, packed up with salad leaves, bread from micro-bakery Söderberg and Sara, and plenty of pickles.
Horte Brygga is also big on pickling and fermenting, making the most of the Scånian larder to craft drinking vinegars, gherkins and colourful teas (think elderflower and rosehip or nettle, pineapple weed and woodruff).
Ängavallen, Vellinge
This 175-hectare, organic farm and hotel prides itself on its long-established farm-to-fork ethos (check out more foodie hotels in Skåne here). For farmer Rolf Axel Nordström this means largely letting his 80 pigs, 100 sheep and 80 cattle do as they please. As he says, “wouldn’t it be nice to be a cow listening to the bumble bees and eating handpicked hay from the pastures?”
See his contented animals for yourself on Ängavallen’s farm safari before eating in the estate’s smart restaurant. Vibrant green leeks are sautéed in brown butter and served with white currants and pickled jalapeños. Slow-cooked veal knuckle is served with mushroom, courgette and hispi cabbage with a reduced red wine sauce, fennel and dill. Apples are cooked in butter with cinnamon and served with brown butter ice cream, candied pine nuts and liquoricey pickled chervil seeds.
It’s a large operation. The farm makes its own charcuterie as well as boasting a dairy and bakery (in the latter it turns ancient grains into rustic loaves). You can buy a picnic from the farm shop to eat in the neat on-site park – baguettes, cheeses, cold dishes and juice freshly squeezed from the kitchen garden’s fruit.
Erikstorps Kungsgård, Landskrona
A leafy campsite may seem an unlikely spot for a destination restaurant, but the surrounding landscape makes this an easy win for its terroir-focussed chefs. Dion Liljegren and Ludvig Odeholm don’t use the word ‘local’ to describe their ingredients (they feel this is a given nowadays) but they do have a genuine passion for produce. A whole forest of herbs, berries and mushrooms is there for the taking right on the doorstep, while an amble down to the closest harbour provides cod and lumpfish roe, and the neighbouring beach comes up with ingredients such as sea buckthorn and beach roses.
Pizzas are popular at the restaurant, made using wheat flour milled a few miles away in Tågarp, and topped with ingredients from the surroundings, in true field-to-fork style. The restaurant’s lambs, roaming the hills of Irena’s Slott castle, have “the best view in the world’ according to Liljegren and Odeholm, while up in Nyhamsläge, Alex Charkuteri supplies coppa-style cured ham and sausages.
The restaurant’s beer selection demonstrates Skåne’s innovative approach to small-batch production – there are three breweries in Landskrona alone. Try the Lucifer sour ale with passion fruit and saffron or the Pink Passion, fermented with hibiscus – both from the town’s Brekeriet brewery. Check out more microbreweries in Skåne here…
For more great foodie spots in Skåne, click here…
Written by Alex Crossley
