TableYear round

Chef's Table

In the kitchen, not beside it

Not a table in a dining room with a view of a kitchen. A table in the kitchen, with the pass in front of you and the chef cooking your dinner while talking to you, which is a different proposition and not one every kitchen can do well.

The ones that can are usually small, often outside a city, and frequently attached to the place the food came from — a farm, a fishing harbour, a market garden. Sweden has an unusual number of these for a country of ten million, and the reason is that the good cooks went home.

You eat what is cooked. There is no menu to choose from and no substitutions beyond genuine allergies, because the whole arrangement depends on the kitchen deciding that morning.

Expect four hours

Expect it to be long. Four hours is normal and the food is a smaller fraction of it than you expect — the rest is conversation with somebody who is delighted to have an audience that is not in a hurry.

It works best for two to six people. Beyond that the chef stops talking and starts serving, and you have bought an expensive dinner rather than the thing you wanted.

Year round, and the quiet months are better. A kitchen in February has time; the same kitchen in July does not, and will say so.

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