Welcome again to the wonderful world of Eat My Words. Today we have the extremely talented Andreas Edlund of Pontus in Sweden. Aside from winning young chef of the year in 2011 in Sweden, he is also the Head Chef of Pontus. You can follow him @andedlund on twitter, and review some of his work on Chefs Talk
What is your favourite part of being a chef?
The bottom line of this question for me is to make the guests happy, that’s what it’s all about in the end of the day.
You can’t get a better rating or award when you sometimes have the chance to meet your guests and they almost crying because the food they just ate was so good, it can’t get any better than that.
Involved in that you have to be creative, have good techniques, big discipline, be driven, management and people skills, obsessed and passionate about your craft and have a respect for food, life, produce and everything about what we are doing.
How did it feel to win Young Chef of the Year? Did you know you were in the running for the award?
It was very fun and a big honour to win the award, and you like get a receipt on that you are on the right track and it’s a little reward for all the hours you are pushing everyday in the kitchen and to know that I am the best young chef in Sweden that year.
Yes I knew, this award came out of a black box cooking competition where we was six young chefs in the finals cooking a three course meal, and I was on top of the podium in the end of the day, felt great to be the one.
What dish are you currently doing that best represents your take on traditional Swedish cuisine?
I am not directly trying to create dishes inspired on traditional Swedish cuisine, instead I am being inspired of the best quality produce that is available for the moment and creating my dishes from there, then I like to use some techniques and recipes from my childhood that my mother, grandmother, grandfather and father learned me.
Recently I made a dish with Swedish sea mussels that I smoked with juniper branches like the way my grandfather learned me in my childhood.
What’s the last restaurant you went to, and what did you think?
I went to Adam&Albin foodstudio in Stockholm last Friday with some chef friends and had a really good dinner; it was the best restaurant experience for me in Sweden so far this year.
The food was exactly of that kind you want to eat on a Friday night when you come directly out of work. Hearty and very tasty food with good touch and simple presentations in a very relaxed atmosphere. Mainly that place is a foodstudio doing cookery classes and private dinners but they open up as a restaurant two nights per month.
I am really happy about that visit!
What is your favourite local restaurant?
In my neighbourhood it isn’t so much food to find, only a supermarket and a small pizzeria, but in Stockholm it has to be a small Japanese ramen shop called Ramen Ki-mama, their ramens is amazing!
Where do you see Swedish cuisine going in the next few years?
I think it will keep on in the same track as it is on now, with all the new Nordic cuisine and the importance of the produce and even farmers is the key and it is going more and more back to the roots, like cooking over open fire and grow where you stand. That is only what I think where it’s going.
But I hope chefs is starting to do their own thing, and in that way starting new trends.
When did you decide you wanted to become and chef, and why?
I knew since I was like 10 years old that I would one day become a chef, I don’t exactly know why but I have always been surrounded with good food and produce in my childhood, with baking Swedish flatbreads with my mom and grandmother, I have been out in the fall with my father and grandfather hunting for moose and today I am hunting myself, every fall we pick our own cloudberries, wild raspberries, blueberries from the forests and we have always grew our own potatoes and vegetables, have being out with my grandfather and fishing and he learned me how he smoked fish, and that is the best smoke technique I have seen to this day even better than all ways I have seen in the professional kitchens.
And always I have been involved in taking care of the produce as well together with my family and to see how it is making and then we had all that great food to eat the whole winter, everything from butchering and grinding the meat, to making jams, preserving, juices, baking the flatbread, learned how to stock the vegetables and potatoes in the cellar over the cold winter we have up in the north Sweden where I grew up.
So I think when I always have helped out with these tasks and also enjoyed it and later when I realized that you also can have this as a job I wanted to work with this.
And I have never ever regretted my decision; I love everyday being a chef.
Who do you admire most?
This might to be a cliché but I have to say my grandmother and father and as well my mom and dad for have getting me involved and learned me all about the food we had in my childhood.
Also my current boss Pontus Frithiof who is a great restaurateur and chef, who has so much knowledge about food and this industry that I never have been in contact with before, and he is pushing me every day so I evolve my own skills and knowledge.
For last I have also to mention Alain Ducasse, I had the great opportunity to dine in his eponymous restaurant Le Lous XV a couple months ago and that is one of the moments when I was touched by food, the food and service I had there is the best I ever have had in a restaurant and I got the opportunity to see how it should be done, this will be a thru inspirational memory. I have always used his cookbooks and texts as inspiration and motivation an amazing chef, restaurateur and legend, the greatest in my eyes!
What attributes do you look for when you hire a chef?
In a perfect world I want a personality that is a chef and not just working as a chef, I don’t want people in my kitchen that just doing the job without passion. It don’t need to be the chefs with best skills or who doing the prep fastest, all that can you learn them pretty easily, but passion, drive and commitment is so much harder to implement in a person, and that is what I like to find in a chef who is looking for a job in my kitchen. I need people around me that is as passionate and driven as myself and all we talk and think about is what we are doing right there and then.
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