Twenty years ago, a group of Scandinavian chefs announced a culinary revolution. But as Norway’s National museum celebrates the New Nordic manifesto’s impact on dining and the arts, has the movement betrayed its own ambitious ideals?
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hen is gastronomy about more than just recipes? When it is New Nordic cuisine: to its advocates, the most influential culinary movement of the 21st century; to its detractors, a school of foodie puritans who have spent the last two decades sucking the joy out of dining and injecting it with po-faced declarations.
If a decade of breathy Netflix food programming is to be believed, you could delicately tweezer some edible petals and micro-herbs on to locally foraged mushrooms and a bed of ancient grains, serve it with a naturally fermented lemonade, and you’ve got yourself a cracking (if not hugely substantive) New Nordic meal.
In fact, what the movement tried to bring to the table was more than that: a wider philosophy that linked your lunch with the natural world, local culture and tradition, while being evangelical about improving your relationship with all three. As Martin Braathen, the curator of a major new exhibition marking New Nordic’s 20th anniversary pronounces ominously: “A carrot is not only a carrot.”
