S1E1 - Magnus Nilsson & Moose Fondue

The specialty was mousse fondue. Mousse fondue? Yes. As in putting cooked mousse in melted cheese? No, it was putting mousse in like thin slices of raw mousse, more in like a Japanese brothy fondue kind of thing, you know? Understood. Like a hot pot. Like a hot pot, you know? Because in melted cheese, that would have been crazy. Welcome. I'm Melina Shannon-DiPietro, the Executive Director of MAD. This is our new podcast, MAD Talks. For our first season, our founder, René Redzepi, who is also the chef and owner of restaurant Noma, sits down each week with an iconic speaker from our signature event, MAD Symposium. Together, they talk about food, creativity, and the future we hope to build. In this episode, René speaks with Magnus Nielsen, chef, former director of MAD Academy, and current program director of the Food Planet Prize. Hello, Magnus Nilsson. My dog is barking in the back. But hello, Magnus Nilsson. We are all friends. We've known each other for a long time. And I have all these questions written down. But somehow I feel like I don't need that because once you and me start talking, we can't stop. But what I wanted to talk to you about today was basically the fact that you are an incredibly successful person in our industry. You've had international success as a restaurateur, as a chef. You've been invited and spoken everywhere around the world. You've traveled the world. You've gathered Michelin stars and all sorts of accolades. You're one of the most successful chef authors of our region, I think, ever. You are an artist. You have exhibitions with your photo art. And you had this restaurant that was just seemingly with rocket fuel on while everyone else was running on diesel. And then you closed it. And now you're coming back. And so what happened? You know, all of this stuff, I'm very curious to understand a little bit. But before we get into all of that, why don't you just tell people that don't know you so well, why did you become a cook? I became a cook because I really like cooking. And, you know, it sounds very, very simple in a way, but it's the truth. I enjoy every aspect of cooking, you know, working with your hands, like the intellectual part of it, figuring something out, learning. How old were you when you realized this? Oh, very young. I mean, I don't know, six, seven, eight, ten. I was young, you know. Really? Yeah, I have a tiny little chef's jacket at home somewhere that my parents bought to me. Yeah. So that was very early. And I mean, it wasn't obvious all of the time because I've also sort of veered off in other directions many times. I mean, after elementary school, I essentially chose between either going to cooking school or to go into school to become a marine biologist. So two very different sort of paths. And then I went to cooking school. And that sort of pattern has repeated itself many times for me, whether I've decided on another path or tried another path and then reverted back to cooking again. Okay. When you think about cooking and you go back into that six, seven, ten year age, is there some moments or is there a person that influenced you in a way that made you decide? I mean, we ate well at home. Both my parents cook. Both my grandmothers cooked a lot. There was always a lot of good food around and an emphasis on, you know, eating dinner together and like all of these things. So I think a lot of cooks have this in common that there are, you know, warm childhood memories of like the community around a table and whatever. But I have this sort of specific memory from like something I saw on television, you know, like the classic French restaurant Auberge de l’Ill. Whoever it was that was the chef at this time, if it was Marc or if it was one of the Haeberlin brothers or whoever it might have been at this point in history. He came to Stockholm and he did like a little guest dinner at a restaurant in Stockholm and it was on like national news television. And I saw that he made this dish, which was a mousseline of scallops with two oysters inside. And it was wrapped in a like a leaf of cabbage and it was steamed. And like there was something with him like explaining technically how this thing was made and what he wanted it to be like that really resonated with me. And you saw this on the news. Yeah, I saw it on the news. And this was like, you know, I was like eight or something. And that's when I, you know, realized that it was more to it than just like the community around a table or having a good meal or whatever. It was like that's the moment. Wow. That's such an incredible moment. I wonder, have you ever had that dish? I have. They kept it on at that particular restaurant for years. Oysters and scallops that made Magnus Nilsson a chef. Yeah. All right. So from scallops to and oysters and then you find yourself becoming a cook. What happened? I mean, I went to cooking school when I started high school. So I was 15, 16, something like that. I liked certain aspects of it, but I was also very disappointed with other parts of it because it wasn't, you know, always that great. In the school. No, I mean, it was, I went to a good cooking school and like there was plenty of opportunity, but like the level of craft and what you were exposed to then, it was not at a, always at a very high level. Mm-hmm. And it was not representative perhaps of what I wanted to do as a cook. It was more, you know, perhaps catering to industry needs at that time, you know. Can I ask, stop you there. Yeah, go ahead. Did you already know what you wanted as a cook? But I think I knew what I wanted to kind of work with in terms of cooking. I didn't have any concept of, you know, great restaurants, right? I've never been to a great restaurant, but I knew that standing behind a plancha and like frying already panade frozen fillets of cod was not what I thought was interesting. It was like that dish with the cabbage and the oysters and the mousseline of scallops and like that type of. So you always had some sort of intuition. I think so. Yeah. For craft, for quality. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Just in you. It was there. Yeah. And I mean, I was lucky to get to intern in like very good restaurants during these sort of high school years. Um, because that was my first experience with like a restaurant that actually cooked for real cooked from scratch and cooked with decent produce and so on. Is there one moment that you can think of? I have myself moments from when I was a young cook. And, you know, there's one specific chef. He gave me a task. And I felt so much trust, so deep trust that it almost ignited a flame in me that I think is still there, actually. Yeah. No, I like the first restaurant that I interned in and the first restaurant that I worked in, I worked extra during high school as well, was in the town where my school was, which was a ski town in Sweden called Åre. And the restaurant was Villa Tottebo, which was like, you know, sort of a resort. It was for the winter guests, you know. Can you imagine people that don't understand Swedish when they hear this word? Villa Tottebo. It's a great Swedish word. It's cute even in Swedish. And there was like two moments like that. You know, one was when I... So this was a big a la carte restaurant. Like they did like several hundred covers in a busy evening. And it was all a la carte. And I remember that I was given like the opportunity to make like a little amuse-bouche. Because it was not something that they normally did. There was no infrastructure for it. How old are you at this point? At this point, I'm 16 probably. And they ask you, this professional restaurant, create something for you. Yeah, I probably ask them if I could do this. Wow. Because I maybe, you know, I'd never had an amuse-bouche. Maybe I'd read about it. I don't know. But I remember that that was something that I was allowed to do. And it was like an addition to something that they normally did. There was none of that. You know, it was like a bread and butter and then you had your one to three courses essentially. And then the other point or part of this was that this restaurant was open all the time. Always open. And when I was in third year of high school, I got to cook on Christmas Eve. When no one else wanted to work. And I took that as a great opportunity and an honor. You know, today I realized that it was just because I was the only one who accepted canceling Christmas Eve. And then just working there alone in the kitchen instead for, you know, whatever. But you saw an opportunity. Yeah. And those are like two important moments, I think, in that sort of theme. Yeah. There's always those moments. Whoever you speak to, they're really truly moments that make a difference. And I remember those, particularly now that, you know, I have a team and we're leaders and you think, am I giving those moments to my team? Or am I sometimes doing the opposite? Because you can also turn off somebody's flame by saying the wrong thing. You know, it's always a challenge. Was there any moment ever in that first period where you felt, fuck this? Not really, actually, to be honest. Like there was like that period of time was very exciting to me. It was like, you know, a sort of journey of discovery because it was so new. And this is, I mean, I hadn't been exposed to any great restaurants. I was interested in them, but there weren't any great restaurants in the town where I grew up. We went out, but it was like, you went for a pizza. Tell us a little bit, if I stop you there. You're in northern Sweden. Sweden is a giant country with a small population. Yeah. There's of course no internet. Were there magazines, international magazines down at the magazine stand there? There was no, like no international magazines really. So how did you get information? It was a Swedish magazine, Swedish Gourmet. Oh, right. Which was run by Lars-Peder Hedberg that you also knew before he passed away. I mean, and he brought like the world of gastronomy to Sweden. And as you say, this is like pre-internet. This is like the only real source of something that wasn't out of a guidebook like Yidd Mishling, which was, you know, today is not particularly inspiring. But in those days, it was very dry, what they published. And I mean, what Swedish Gourmet managed to do was to like really bring sort of the, you know, the feeling of someone being there, experiencing something and then giving it to you to share. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I'm laughing because you say it was really dry. The Michelin guide. Well, I remember them. We all had them. We bought them every year. Yeah. And you read them and it's like, you come to a point, it's like, why am I reading this? Yeah. There wasn't much information in them. No. It was basically, here's a star or not, a two or three. This is what it costs. Yeah. And then like the thing with the different forks and knives and that no one really ever understood fully. Yeah. But the first time I saw Noma in a Michelin guide, I was like, I couldn't believe it. Yeah. And then what? I traveled to France with a friend who also worked in this restaurant, who's a chef. And his aunt had a place in Paris with, you know, one of these little like cleaning cupboards in the attic where you could potentially have a bunk bed if you're really motivated. And I was supposed to stay there for just like a little while. And then I ended up staying for several years, you know, and at first he was sort of through the winter and I grew quite tired with the idea of cooking. And I thought that maybe I would go home. I don't know. It wasn't fun, you know. I didn't find a place. I worked at L'Arpège and I was fired. Why? I think, you know, I think like the reality of it was that it was like, I started in December. I worked over like the Christmas rush and in January they weren't very busy. So they just like got rid of a few people that weren't performing super well. What did he tell you from Chef Passard? No, it wasn't him. It was Mauro Colagreco, our mutual friend who was the head chef there at that point, you know. And what did he tell you? Not much because he didn't speak very good French. I didn't speak very good French either. So it was just made clear that I was not working there anymore. And then I interned in a couple of places and it wasn't great. You know, I had a good time in Paris, but like it wasn't, I couldn't see that there was, you know, I wasn't excited about the future in cooking at that point. But can you say, if you think back, can you now in retrospect see what it was? Was it too much work? Was it the atmosphere? What do you think it was? I think it was like, yes, that I wasn't, I wasn't having like good fortunes in like work life and all of these things, you know, because I worked there. It wasn't exciting to me then. I didn't understand it. I didn't, I thought I spoke French. I mean, I have to add that as well. I thought I spoke French. Turned out that I didn't. So it was very difficult to have a meaningful existence in that restaurant. And I didn't understand and truly appreciate what they were doing at that point, which I actually started doing much later as a, as a customer and working in other restaurants in France later on. But, you know, it was, it wasn't fun. You know, the idea was to go back to Sweden and start going to business school instead and not be a cook anymore. And what happened to the marine biologist in you? That, I still don't know what happened to him, you know. But that curiosity for the natural world, that stayed with you. Oh yeah, absolutely. So business school. Yeah. And that was more like, you know, when, when you, when you're 22 or something and you start realizing that you need to like have a job and you need to do something. But did you want to be rich? What made you say business? It seemed like an appropriate sort of thing to do, you know, because I, I, I had like the academic qualifications to get into a very good business school. And that is because you've always been very good academically. Yeah. We should mention this to everyone. Yeah. I mean, school was easy for me in many ways. And I think that, that, you know, it just felt like an appropriate path to take to just go to business school. And then I just didn't, I just stayed in France. Because you got a job at? La France. La France. And it started as a- Which at that time was probably the most exciting restaurant in all of Europe. It was going to be, you know, it, because when, when I, when I got the, I got the job. It was actually, I mean, I read it about in Swedish gourmet, not big article, like a little, like tiny five row note, you know, that they'd been there. And it was like up and coming. And it was the old head chef and general manager from Le Pêché who started this restaurant. So it was very new when I came there. They had just gotten their first Michelin star. I interned at first and then that turned into, you know, an actual paid position. And, uh, all of a sudden I just enjoyed all of it. I mean, I've never worked more in my life than when I worked there. Even having your own restaurant? Even having my own restaurant. Wow. Yeah. And, uh, it was also a very tough restaurant to work in. I mean, small and very, very busy and, you know, incredibly ambitious. Hot, cramped. Yeah, yeah. All of that, you know. And, but I, I enjoyed it, uh, tremendously and I enjoyed working with. What was it? I don't know. That made the difference there. I don't, it was like just, you know, it felt, I think maybe, maybe it was because I got along really well with Pascal, the owner, um, who, I mean, spoke French. He'd lived outside of France. So he had a different perspective on not just his cooking, but on everything that, you know, has to do with how you perform in the kitchen. Um, and I think we just got along really well. And, and, uh. But was he more curious towards you? Did he listen more to you? Did he ask? Very curious. Very curious. So you felt like you were actually a person there and he, like he was listening to you. Yeah. So I, I, you know, I stayed and I didn't enroll in business school. So we can thank Pascal Barbeau. For me not working in a bank. For you not being an evil banker. Yes. And us just serving you food. Yeah. Uh, wow. So he's an important person in your career as well. Very important. And, uh, and La France was also, I mean, important for those reasons that we have. I've said, but it was also the first restaurant where I saw, like truly saw and understood the difference between exceptional produce and just like produce or good produce even. Mm. Uh, because the emphasis there on like the quality, like the, sometimes intangible quality of produce is so clear. Um, and to me, that's like, I mean, you know yourself, like no chef ever says that they're working with anything but the best produce. Everyone says that I work with the best produce. But do they? Do they? And then of course it's impossible because not everyone can work with the best produce. But I felt like when I was there that that was truly what it was. It was the best produce. Yeah. In France. Yeah. It was the best you could find, you know. Um. Unbelievable. Yeah. Wow. It sounds like such a moment. It was. When you came back from this very important restaurant in France, in Paris, I met you. Uh, you were at Noma with a bunch of Swedish chefs. I can't remember who it was, but I remember you. Yep. Very vividly. That's the first time we meet. Yep. And next time I hear about you, you've opened Fäviken. Is that correct? Remembering? Kind of. You're probably fast forwarding a little bit. Uh. Probably. It happens when we get old, I think. I came, I was actually still working at La France when I came here. Okay. Uh, the first time. And I mean, this was also, this was also like an important moment in, for me and gastronomically, because I, I came here and this was, I mean, no, the restaurant can't, it can't have been open for more than like eight or 10 months or something. It was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. But I remember that it was almost impossible to get there. Um, because like the, the taxi driver had no idea, had no idea about this restaurant. Uh, and, uh, I didn't have a smartphone. So I had to find the address somehow. I remember that it felt like, uh, an old Western movie. You were expecting like tumbleweed to come rolling across in front of the restaurant when you got out of the taxi. Um, but you know, it was the, it was the first time, uh, where I saw that there was a future in like my home region for a restaurant like the one that I already worked in in France. That there could be like a place for something. Um, and that was something, it was a very early iteration of Noma. It was nowhere near what it became and what it was today, but it was still like, you know, that there was a seed of something there. Um, and that it didn't have to be, uh, like a French or Italian restaurant. You know, you don't need beurre blanc necessarily. Or ravioli on the menu. I mean, there were, there were plenty of good restaurants around that, that had a very unique character then like Waksen or Mistral in Stockholm or something like that, but they hadn't, I don't know why, but they never appealed to a bigger audience than locally, you know? True. And I knew that that was not gonna cut it for anything that I wanted to do. And when you look back to those early days, when you got offered a restaurant, Fäviken, I mean, I, it was a little bit, uh, like a coincidence, right? Oh yeah. The way it happened. Uh, and it was supposed to be a small thing, kind of like you going to Paris and then it ends up being a sensation. But, so I mean, the background of the Fäviken is this, it's a mountain estate, like up north, roughly in the region where I came from. It's owned by a family, uh, with wealth. Um, it's like the beautifully restored farm essentially. And, um, they have it for themselves. It's where they have, you know, they celebrate Christmas and they go there for vacation. They go there for hunting and things like that. But they also had the ambition when they bought it, that it was not going to be closed off to the public because it's a place that has very deep meaning for a lot of people living in that region. So that was always part of the deal that it was going to be open. Kind of like a hunting lodge or something. Sort of like that. But, you know, it used to be, I mean, in the old days, like it used to be a farm that was built to supply the then copper mines in the Oro mountain, which was the biggest workplace in Scandinavia at some point. It had a thousand employees in the end of the 1800s, you know, with food. So it's a place that's been there for a long time. It's been important for the community and so on. So they wanted to keep it open. Um, and, uh, they figured that part of that was to keep the restaurant that they inherited when they bought the place in 2003 or something, uh, keep that going, you know? And, uh, of course, I mean, they don't come from restaurants. They had no idea about that, but it was a place mostly catering to functions, you know, like corporate dinners. And the specialty was mousse fondue. Mousse fondue. Yes. As in putting cooked mousse and melted cheese? No, it was putting mousse in like thin slices of raw mousse, more in like, you know, sort of a Japanese brothy fondue kind of thing, you know? Understood. Um. Like a hot pot. Like a hot pot, you know? Because in melted cheese, that would have been crazy. Uh, and then it wasn't in any way great, but the first service I ran at Fäviken, uh, was like a reservation that was left from before. So it was 179 people for mousse fondue. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. And you open up. And then you, you find some sort of energy very quickly. The rumbling starts around Scandinavia. Yeah. Something's going on. There's something new happening. There's a new vibe. Uh, it went very quick that people noticed you. How did that feel to you? Did you feel the rise? Yeah, it did, but not initially, you know? And, and I remember, I mean, in the beginning, like the plan was not to make this happen. The plan was to like, just make this a bit more sustainable for the family who ran it. And for me to stay there for maybe half a year, I was asked to come up there to help them buy wine. Because at this point I had stopped cooking again and trained to be sommelier instead. Um, so I thought that it was a fun, like a fun opportunity to practice buying wine and do it with this family who seemed nice. And my friend, he cooked there when they had like their private functions and things like that. Um, hang on, hang on. Why did you stop again cooking? Uh, well, I was incredibly disappointed with produce when I came home to Sweden from having worked at La France. Like, so you just said, fuck this. Yeah. It was like impossible, you know, because everything I cooked, it felt and looked like food from La France, but I did not have like the produce to cook that way. And I also did not have like the supporting, you know, system to cook that way. So it was just like such an uphill slope and it was not special. You said, just forget about it. Yeah. I'll do wine instead. Yeah. Yeah. You always make these very wild, quick decisions where it's like everything is changing now. Yeah. But maybe we'll get into that. You open up, success happens, it becomes wild. You also start being like a father, I guess. Yeah. Um, extremely busy. You are really on the scene. You, you, uh, you create a bestseller that I think is still kind of the bestseller of Nordic food. I might be up there still. The Nordic cookbook. Um, I, it was just wild to watch you. Mm. And then you want to close. Yeah. Why? It's sort of, it's, it's a bit complicated to explain, but essentially. Give us the Twitter version. Yeah. The Twitter. I mean, I woke up one, one morning and then I did not want to work there anymore. Why? Well, that's the Twitter version, you know, like, I don't know why. Uh, and, and I think it was always made clear and it was always an understanding between me and Patrick and Anshala to own the place, like own the estate that this was not going to be forever. And I always thought that they were going to run out of patience with having me running a restaurant in their vacation home before, you know, I ran, ran out of, uh, you know, passion to run that place. But in the end, that wasn't the case. That wasn't the case. In the end, I actually just woke up one morning and I was like, nope, not interested in cooking. Was it the industry? Was it too much pressure? Was it a combination? What? Because there must've been several factors for you. None of that. It was just the place. I was just like done with the place, you know, I didn't want to do it anymore. And, and, uh, I didn't, I never, I didn't, you know, I never minded the pressure. I never minded like all of those parts. Uh, the last few years I didn't cook anything at Fäviken, but I still ran it. I mean, I was very much present and working there and doing things. I did not do any of the cooking. Um, and I can, even today I can miss that. I miss the craft of cooking, but that had very little to do with the, uh, the decision to close. And I think it was just like, I didn't feel like running it anymore. And because of the way that it was all constructed from the beginning with an understanding that this has an end at some point, it was also relatively easy for me to say, well, now this is that point. And so at that point you are deciding to close. You have two or three kids at this point. Three kids. Three kids. You don't have a plan. No plan. Secondary plan, but you have family to support. And I guess you also build up some sort of note and you built up like a presence in the world. Hmm. Were you afraid of losing that? No. No? No. I mean, I've never cared about that. It's like, and that's, it's an honest answer. It's like, I just don't, none, none of that, but you know. Cause I think that's very unusual. I think most people, they experience some sort of success. And then inevitably, of course, other things happen. Yeah. And then people, they try to protect this success and they start making very bad decisions. Yeah. No, I never really, never, never cared about that. You know, it's like, it's a, like all of that to me, it's a tool to achieve something, you know, that you want to do. It's like with Fäviken and like having that sort of notoriety or, you know, fame was a way to fill the restaurant so that I could do what I felt interested in. A way to sell the books, for example, so that I could, you know, spread the word on like the traditions of Nordic cooking. And then in the end also actually like buy the orchard that we live in today. I mean, I couldn't have done that without like writing those books. No way, you know. But I, the, the, the practicality of it that you mentioned, like that I actually had a family to support and those things that was more present than those sort of other questions on the consequences of this. But I always figured that there would be something coming up and, you know, I knew that if nothing else like exciting would come up, I could always take like a consultancy for a short amount of time and, you know, get by for a year or two. And like, if nothing truly interesting came up, I could always start a new restaurant. Because at that point, you know, everyone says it is difficult to start restaurants and it is when you've never ran a restaurant, but when you had a restaurant and you, you know, you reach some amount of success, it's not that difficult anymore, which is terrible, but it's true. Right. Oh, Magnus, I wish I had your confidence in saying that, but, you know, it's, I don't think it's easy, no, but. But. I should rephrase that, to get to start a restaurant. Yes. To start a restaurant is always difficult, but to like, to get to opportunity. To make it work, that's hard. Yeah. To have an idea and then to open it, those two moments are fairly okay, but then making it work in the long run, that's a different one. That's a different thing, you know, but I always felt like, you know, if everything else like fails, I can always like deck out a small kitchen at the farm and I can cook, you know, I can just cook for people there. And I can make a living for myself, at least that way. It's amazing. You, you, you are like that. It's really, truly is a gift to be like that. Almost like scrappy, you know, and not, you know, I'll just open a deck oven and start cooking something and then I'll support myself. That's, that's incredible. Well, when, if we just finish off Fäviken, what are you most proud of when you think back? I mean, that we made the place work. And you know what you're mentioning that that's a difficult part, but Fäviken really, truly worked. And for the first half of its existence, it didn't. The first half of its existence, it's, it's functioned only because of the sacrifice of a lot of people going into it. It didn't really work. It just functioned, you know. Are you talking about in one way? I mean, in every way, like financially in terms of how, you know, the sustainability of people working there, you know, creatively in every way, it was, you know, unsustainable. How did you feel that? I mean, I felt like I couldn't continue doing it for practical reasons, like that it was just not possible for me to work that way. There was this moment where we discussed with the then sort of management team, which was quite small. I mean, we're still only like 18, 20 people working there, you know, full time. That like this can't go on because like we're going to run out of cooks and none of us, like the core people want to work this way. And like, this is not going to be like, we can't do this anymore. And that was a combination of like, you know, what you expect from a team, what you expect from customers, like how you want to work creatively, like all of these things, you know, what you expect customers to pay. It's a hard equation to solve. It is a very difficult equation. And for us, it was sort of either we change it now or we are just close because we know that it's not going to be able to continue. And what we did essentially, you know, when we analyzed this, it became very clear that a lot of the problems or most of the problems, they had to do with the fact that we were understaffed in relationship to what we wanted to do, like the level of ambition that we wanted to deliver on. So essentially, we just doubled our team. So we went from 18 or 19 to 43 employees. And to pay for this, we also went from 1,700 krona to 3,800 krona menu price overnight, which is like still today's 3,800 krona is still a lot of money for a restaurant menu. But this is also like six years ago or more. It's almost 10 years ago now. That was a big increase. I remember when that happened and people were like in shock. Yeah. But the interesting thing was that I had prepared like all of these sort of little defenses to explain that, you know, we're going to pay, we're going to, you know, employ people. We're going to enforce a 40-hour work week with a 10-hour cap on overtime fully paid. We're going to unionize the restaurant, like all of these things, you know, that cost a lot of money. And then no one cared. Like there was not a single journalist that wrote about it or asked about it. There was not a single mention on social media. There was nothing. And the restaurant booked out the same way as before. Wow. Which was weird, you know, because I, you know, and I'm not saying that that's like true everywhere. Of course it's not. But do you know of any chef out there that doesn't look at the balance sheet at the end of the year and thinking to himself, it's not going so well, but I don't dare to raise the price. Everyone does that. Everyone does that. And I think it's like it's a huge problem in our industry because we don't accept that market price is what you have to charge. And then you have to kind of abide by those rules and spend market price plus profit. Like that's your budget, like your operating budget. You know, we just sort of have our operating budget based on what everything costs. And then we like stick a finger up in the air and we sort of guess what people might find acceptable to pay for this. And I think that leads to a lot of these issues with, you know, under resourcing of mainly of staff, actually. And for us, I mean, that was a huge difference. We went from this place where people came and they worked for a few months. I shouted at them and they worked 80 hours a week. And then, you know, they left. And then someone else came in to a place where people just stayed. And when the restaurant closed, I mean, like almost no one on the payroll, on the final payroll had worked there for less than like three years. And there was a lot of people who worked here for like five, six, seven years, which is, I mean, it's really rare for that kind of restaurant, I think. That's definitely. And the interesting thing was that the restaurant worked better financially during this time than it did before. Because we had also like factored in the fact that we needed to be somehow profitable. That's definitely something to be proud of, to having set that up. Yeah. And then in the end, you know, you never made any money because you always spent that money on something. But it was something of our choosing, you know. Sure, sure. A new gadget or like one more staff or, you know, something that you wanted to do. But it was by choice, not by, you know. Yeah, no, I get it. You're always looking to make it better for the guests, to unlock more creativity. Yeah. You know, that's, I know the type of person you are. I think in that sense, we're quite similar. And I think many chefs think like that. Yeah. But you feel the need to a change. I guess you conquered it. You did it. And you change. And then for many years, you've done, what have you been doing, basically? I mean, I bought the apple orchard where we live, which is a 10 hectare like production orchard. So we grow 100 tons of apple every year. So we turn that sort of photographic. It sounds like a lot, 100 tons of apple, but it isn't that much. It's nothing, you know. How many liters of juice is that? That's 65,000 liters of juice if you juice all of it. It's a small apple orchard. You can't make a living off of it. At least not if you bought it like we did. Maybe if you inherited, you could make a small living out of it. But it's super interesting to work with primary production to, you know, grow food as a commodity and to try to do that really well. And to try to grow for flavor, not for uniformity of shape or color or some other ridiculousness, you know. Very difficult. Why is it that? I mean, that's the old question. Flavor, quality. Why is that? Why does that get punished in our world of food? Why do you think so? No, I think it's just, you know, it's more difficult because of the way that the food distribution system, which I think for the most part gets too much shit, you know. Because after all, like our food distribution system is what makes us have access to food, most of us at least today, as opposed to 100 years ago. But it also comes at a cost. And this is like part of that, that, you know, you just sacrifice certain things simply because it's easier. It's easier for a retailer to just have a tray of perfectly red, perfectly spotless, equal sized apples. Equally priced as well. Equally priced. It's like all of that is easier, you know. But, you know. So, and the other part of what I've done is that I, I mean, I worked here at MAD when the MAD Academy started, which was something I did for about two years. Which, I mean, was incredibly interesting to work with the hospitality industry in a way that I'd never worked with it before. And then I went on to work with, as the director general for another foundation called the Kurt Bergfors Foundation that gives out the world's biggest environmental award called the Food Planet Prize. Which is, it is the world's biggest environmental award in general, but it can only ever go to projects within the food system. So, it's also very different from what I've done before, but super interesting. In this period, did you miss cooking? Did you miss restaurants? Or were you happier than ever? I mean, I was equally happy because this was very challenging for me, you know. To come from the background that I come from and then start working with this, you know. You're the head, you're the highest executive of an organization that manages 500 million krona in capital. And your main job is to make sure that no one, like, squanders this money on shit. And that it goes to the initiative somewhere in the world that has the highest potential for impact. And it sounds quite easy, but it's not. It's very challenging. So, for me, too, like, it was very stimulating. It was in the same way as running a great restaurant. I do miss having guests. You know, I don't miss cooking as such because I cook a lot at home and, you know, things like that. But I do miss having guests. So, what made you open? What made you say, I'm doing this again? So, the idea when I closed Fäviken first was to open a new restaurant in the orchard to build, like, a bigger version of Fäviken in the orchard. And those plans were, like, far along, you know. And then spring of 2019 or spring of 2020, it must have been, when it was pandemic, you know, it was more time to think about things. And I realized that I didn't want to do it. You know, I closed this place because I didn't want to run it. And I was just about to launch a huge project to open a restaurant exactly the same as the one that I just closed because I didn't want to run it. But in a different part of country. But why not that restaurant? Was it because you were sort of locked into it? Yeah. It was the same as Fäviken. But with, you know, it was just so much money and so... To build a new place. To build a new place. And it was fundamentally going to lock me in for a long time doing something that I wasn't sure about whether I wanted to do or not. So, I canceled that project completely. And then the orchard became just the place where we lived. And, yeah. After that, I kind of tested a lot of ideas about how to possibly run a restaurant in the orchard. But I never found something that I wanted to commit to. What sort of ideas? I mean... Like radical ideas or... All kinds of ideas, you know, running like a canteen, running a bakery. At one point, I did like the math on running like a small jam factory there. Just making jam. Like a one-person jam factory. Is it good math? No. I mean, it was more profitable than the orchard is today. But still not like, you know, attractive. So, you took the apples into jam, basically. I mean, I don't know what it was. But, you know, it's like I tried a lot of different ideas on the orchard. And none of it really felt like something I wanted to do. Because I also had... I mean, I had the job here at MAD, which was very interesting and stimulating. I had the job at the foundation after that that was also stimulating. So, I didn't feel a huge need to do any of this. And I actually kind of decided that there was not going to be another restaurant. Okay. But why had you decided, I'm not doing restaurants? Because I didn't feel like intensely that this was something that I wanted to do. And then the house came along. The house came along. It's just in town. Like, we live just outside of town. And this is like below the hill where we live in the outskirts of town on the beach. There is this old inn that was built in 1905. As a boarding... First as a boarding school for young girls to learn how to run a household. And then it was quickly turned into... And now it's for big bearded men. Exactly. You're right. No, it was quickly turned into an inn. So, I mean, it was essentially... It's been run as an inn since 1907. And so, you find this house. Next to you. Big history. Incredible building, correct? How do you put together a project in these days? Because the world is very different from when you opened Fäviken today. Yeah, very different. You know, for me... How did you go about it? Well, I went about it completely the wrong way, I think, in like, traditionally speaking. Because I just bought the house. I secured funding and I bought the house. And then... So, you secure the property, which is, of course, a fantastic thing to do. I'd recommend anyone who has... If you're about to open a restaurant or something, if you can actually acquire the property, do that. And then, how did you build the project? What sort of restaurants did you foresee? Well, you know, I knew... What do you think the world is missing right now, basically? The world is missing a perfectly ordinary restaurant, to be honest, you know. And it sounds a bit weird. But for me, like, the hotel is the main thing with this place. It's really like, you know, people have stayed in these rooms for more than 100 years. And there's something with that that's just, like, special. And then, I mean, I knew already from the beginning that it was not going to be, you know, a continuation on, like, the creative sort of expression of Fäviken. Because that, to me, is just not interesting. And it's not something that this town needs. Are you worried that people might go there expecting? I'm 100% certain that that's going to happen. And that's, like, the only fear I have with this project, you know. It's like, this is going to be a great restaurant. Like, there is no mistake about that. But it's not going to be that kind of restaurant. It's not going to be a tasting menu. It's not going to be excluding. I mean, excluding is not always bad. It's sometimes also good. When it comes to these types of restaurants, it's part of the appeal of the restaurant. But this restaurant is not going to be that, you know. This is a place that will be open breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It will have a bakery. It will be a la carte. You will be welcome to come and eat only a main course and, you know, have a beer if you want to. And the whole point of it is to create a restaurant attached to the hotel that's an integrated part of our local community, like our town. Yes. And apply the same ideas and thoughts around produce and craft that both you and I have applied on our, you know, super fine dining restaurants. But, you know, on a cinnamon bun and a cup of coffee and 180-krona plated lunch and things like that. Wow. How many rooms? 15. So it's not huge, you know. And what is your dream for that place? For it to be there for a really long time and to, you know, be profitable and function so that you can keep it going at a very high level of quality and to make it into an integrated part of, like, our community. What sort of measures have you put into place to secure that? I know you. So you must have thought you're, you think like an engineer. So you must have put something in the plan where you think this will give it the longevity I'm looking for. Yeah. Well, I think that like one of those things is that I'm, I really also believe in the idea of co-ownership. And I first toy with the idea that this place was going to be fully staff owned. And then I, you know, when you start thinking about that, you know, it can feel very appealing in many ways. But you also run into issues after a while because when, you know, push comes to shove in the end, you know, there has to be someone who can also take responsibility when everything is not going the way it's supposed and so on. So the way that I've done this now is that I own the building 100%. And then I leased the finished building equipped and ready to another company. So you have funded the whole remodeling of the whole building. How have you done that? I mean, I borrowed money. I borrowed a lot of money. You must have borrowed a lot of money. Yeah, I did. And, you know, I was very fortunate to be in a position where that's possible. And it has to do with the fact that the building is in a town that's attractive in terms of real estate, that I had a little bit of money myself. And also that Fäviken was successful. And, you know, people believe in this idea and in me. But I put most of those parts in like the real estate company. And then the rights to use the building is leased out to an operations company. And the idea with that is that it should be possible for a whole bunch of people to buy into this operations company, to buy into the restaurant and the hotel without having that much money. Is the restaurant and hotel separated in companies or is it all one company? That's one. So if you buy in, you buy into the home. But you don't own the building. Sure. So, you know, you'll rent it. And then, you know, and the way that this is laid out is, I mean, currently I own most of the operations company as well. But I've been very open with the fact that up to 50% of the operations company I want the team to own. So I will retain 50%. It's such an interesting way. I hope that it's the right way. We'll see in the future if it is, you know. So nobody can predict the future, but it is a way forward that's different. I think so. Yeah. Fantastic. I really like that. I can see you have the bank is there. They believe in you. The money is there. You have the team more or less in place. There's a good plan for them how to take ownership and really build a future there. There's one part of all of this, which is something that we didn't grow up in, but has become increasingly more important, which is to spread the word out. How are you going to tell the world? The way that I hope that it happens is that we are able to, you know, have a mix of half, about half of the people being local customers and the other half coming in from somewhere else. Whether that's, you know, Gothenburg or Copenhagen or like the closer, bigger towns in the area, or if it's from further away, who knows? But we don't get to choose our customers. You get what you get. But, you know, if I could hope for something, it would be to get that mix. And I would personally find it very sad if we, three or four or five years from now, run a decent business there that works, you know, that pays our salaries and pays for the building and makes it possible for me to pay back. But only with people who are traveling in. You know, I really want those customers, but I also really want this place to be like part of my town. Yeah, the local community in your town and they embrace you. No, I can totally see that. That never happened with Fäviken, you know, because of what it was. It was so small, so limited in amount of chairs and so costly and, you know, very excluding. And it was great for what it was, but there were not many customers from the local area there. When you think back, what has changed in you? What do you think about our industry today and the role of being a cook? I think that there will always be like an appetite for the very highest expression of any craft. So, I mean, people talking about like fine dining, being dead and stuff like that. I think that's just bullshit. It's like it's not true because there's always an appetite for the very, very, you know, highest or most extreme or most fantastic expression of anything. Anything. Yeah, for sure. But I don't feel particularly excited about that world today. There are so few restaurants that I feel truly excited about at the moment. And this is something that I hear when I speak to other chefs as well. It's impossible to look into the future like that. But it feels like at some point now something is going to happen. What do you think has made that? Because a lot of people talk about this, that we were a part of a generation where so many things happened in our region. And, you know, there's something not happening. Yeah. What is it that went wrong? Is it the media has changed or is there a different focus? I don't think it's about something going wrong. I think it's just like the natural cycle of things. It's like you have these sort of periods of time where a lot of change happens when there is a lot of disruption that leaves space for new things. And then you have other periods where perhaps the next big thing is going to gain momentum. And since you can't look into the future and you're part of the old thing, you won't also, you know, see the new thing coming. And I think that that's where we are now. It's like I can't see for the life of me what like the next thing that's going to make me truly excited about paying like 12,000 krona for a dinner again. Like what that is, you know. Because I still I love going to great restaurants. You know, I love like paying for like the craft and like beautiful service and beautiful cooking. It's like but that sort of excitement of discovery that used to be there. Like I can't see what that's going to be next. But I know that it will come. You know, it will happen again because it's happened so many times before. Yeah. Can't wait for that either. Oh, this podcast is about you. No, I think this specific topic we could unpack and we could speak for hours about this. Yeah. Because there's so many things that is to be talked about. Yeah. You know, it's about training. It's about how the world is. It's about what the focus is in our industry. It's also a changing world and a changing industry. And there's so many aspects. But I guess it is true. We're all waiting for that grassroots thing to happen. Yeah. It comes in and like shows us another way of looking at things, you know, that we just couldn't think of. No, and I think that's the thing, right? Because, you know, if you would have asked, you know, someone who'd been in this for longer than you and I. Let's say, you know, Thomas Keller, when like the French laundry broke through and became the thing. If you would have asked him then whether he thought that a handful of restaurants in the Nordics was going to be like the next big thing in the early 2000s. Yeah, he would have laughed out loud. Right. And I think we're at that moment as well. It's like where we cannot see what the next big thing is. But do you realize there's still plenty of cooks out there that are laughing out loud of the restaurants in the Nordics? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's fine. I think that's perfectly fine. Magnus, you are so smart. You're so delightful to speak with. You really are. Thank you. You're a person that reads a lot. I know that. You're curious about so many things. And if there's something you don't know, you attack it immediately. And you've now been in this industry for decades, experienced all the success you have. What do you dream of? I mean, I... What do you see yourself when you're 75? Well, you know, it's like that. I don't know. But the reason why I want to do these things that I'm currently doing, like with the hotel and, you know, bringing in these partners and doing all of the work that we're doing in the orchard as well. I mean, we've built like a new Apple barn with a side area in it and... Apple barn. Yeah. Like an outbuilding for like all of the Apple business. You know, for me, it's like I just want to create a circumstance where I can go to work every day and do things that are interesting and stimulating and exciting and work with nice people that I want to see every day. And somehow make it possible for them to stay. It's a lot to hope for. It is a lot to hope for. But I think it's something to aim for. You know, if you have the opportunity to try to create that situation like small or big, I think it's something to go for. And, you know, if it doesn't work out, like if the idea of running a restaurant sort of collectively, if this doesn't function, if, you know, people pay even less than they do today for organic apples and like all of this fails, well, you know, then I'll do something else. I'll figure that out then. But I think that it's like worth trying to create the circumstance where you surround yourself with people that are interesting and stimulating and nice and where you get to work with interesting and stimulating things every day. Let me ask one final question because you spoke at MADD. Yep. It was in 2011. And, man, things were so different back then for us and for our industry and just in general. Now we're doing MADD 7. It's been seven years since we've done the last one. And we lived through a pandemic and now we're going through turmoil in the world. And we're trying to inspire people coming to MADD to think long term and have, you know, plans ready. When I say built to last. Yeah. What do you think? What do you say? I mean, that's what I'm trying to do, you know, sort of what I was touching on before is like looking at what circumstances you want to surround yourself with and like aiming for that, even if it seems a bit far fetched. And I really hope that for me it works out the way that I said and that on top of that it's also profitable so that I can pay back all the money that I've borrowed. And I think that, you know, you can apply this on any one situation because not everyone is going to be able to like launch that kind of project or build like here, you know, a whole beautiful building to house like your 2.0 version of your first restaurant in. But I think you can always like start thinking about what it is that you want your everyday to contain and then, you know, build for that. And, you know, it doesn't have to be like the big things that you buy your own building and you do, you know, but, you know, rather than looking at what might be perceived as the apparent path to take for someone in your position, whatever it might be, if it's your sort of a cook starting out in this industry or if it's someone who's run restaurants 20 years, you know, rather than looking at that, you look at what is it that you want to fill your everyday with. And then just build for that. Start from the beginning and build for that. I think that's the only thing that I teach people to think about. Yeah, but there's an honesty in that and a clarity in that sort of decision. And I actually 100% believe you're right when you say this. No doubt about it. And with the words that is from Magnus Nilsson, envision, what did you say? You said, think of what your life should contain and then build from that. I don't remember what I said, but maybe something like that. Think of what you want your life to have. Yeah, I think that's sort of... And then start building from that, which is, when I'm hearing you, you want to surround yourself with happy people, deliver food and quality where people are happy, your local community supports you. It's a business that thrives, takes care of people, and it can continue like that in the long run. Yeah, I hope so. That's a good plan. Yeah. Thank you so much, Magnus Nilsson. Thank you. Thanks for listening to MAD Talks. And please come back next week for a new episode with another fascinating speaker from MAD Symposium. This podcast was produced by Sidsel Kaae Nørgaard and made by MAD. We're a global nonprofit based in Copenhagen that works with chefs, servers, and others in hospitality to help them become better leaders and take better care of our planet. To learn more about our work, follow us on socials @themadfeed. Sign up for our newsletter, or check us out at madfeed.co.