Destination Flavour Scandinavia

In Copenhagen, Denmark Adam learns the art of making the perfect cup of the Danish coffee before heading off to investigate the region. He meets Claus Meyer, the godfather of the New Nordic Food Revolution who takes him behind the scenes of his Michelin-starred restaurant Studio with head chef Torsten Vildgard. Adam heads to the Danish countryside to Dragsholm Castle where he meets renowned chef Claus Henriksen and together they harvest vegetables from the “World’s Best Veggie Patch” before Adam makes a ‘hen’s soup’.

Adam meets Meik Wiking, the director of The Happiness Institute in residential Copenhagen. Together they cook the Danish national dish stegt flaesk (pork belly with parsley sauce) and discover how and why Denmark is one of the happiest countries in the world. Adam ventures into test kitchen of arguably the world’s most inspiring chef Christian Puglisi and samples his latest creations at his restaurant Relae before visiting a real Danish bakery to make a real ‘Danish’ pastry.

Adam again catches up with Claus Meyer the godfather of the New Nordic Food Revolution, who shows him the reach of his food movement inside a historic maximum security jail. Adam sees ‘inside’ Claus’s inmate cooking program and Adam gets involved teaching those inmates to make a Danish dessert æbleskiver (Danish apple doughnuts). Adam heads off to meet the Dame of Danish smørrebrød and perfects his own open sandwich before arriving on Denmark’s west coast, to learn of Vikings life and diet and make salmon on a plank in a traditional Viking home.

In Stockholm, Sweden, Adam is inside the daring kitchen of chef Niklas Ekstedt’s Michelin restaurant (and namesake) Ekstedt. Here, Niklas shows Adam his rustic pre-electricity style of cooking using only using fire, wood and hay to cook his fine dining dishes. Adam meets chef and restaurateur Mathias Pilblad who’s opened the only Swedish meatball restaurant in Sweden, and cooks up a classic Swedish meatballs dish before travelling to the famous Skåne region to meet the largest wild boar producer in Sweden and makes a delicious roast boar leg.

Adam is in the Swedish city of Malmö to visit the kitchen of Titti Qvarnström, the first Swedish female chef awarded a Michelin Star for her restaurant Bloom in the Park. Adam visits a school where they have introduced a city-wide organic food policy and makes pea soup and spelt pancakes for the kids. Lastly Adam takes in a new Swedish project called Hoffice, which turns apartments into temporary co-working spaces and makes delicious semlor (Swedish cream-filled cardamom buns) in the home-office kitchen.

Adam is in Norway, the wealthiest country in the region yet slightly behind Sweden and Denmark in the food revolution. Adam enters the Mathallen Food market in Oslo, the new central hub for high end food in the city before going behind the scenes at Oslo’s ground-breaking two Michelin star restaurant Maaemo with head chef Esben Holmboe Bang. He then ventures out into the nearby fjords in Bergen to catch some of Norway’s abundant sustainable brown crabs and make a krabbefest, before travelling to the far north of Norway to spend time with the indigenous Sami people for some reindeer herding and traditional Sami food.

Adam is 78 degrees north in the remote Artic Svalbard archipelago at the world’s most northern fine dining restaurant, Huset. Adam meets Jason Roberts, an Australian who has lived in Svalbard for 20 years, before entering 1930’s Moelven wooden barracks adorned with mining and hunting memorabilia. Here Adam makes the famous Norwegian salmon gravadlax before completing his trip at the Global Seed Vault. With its aim to protect the world’s food resources, the vault keeps a back-up copy of the world's agricultural seeds so they may remain safe from man-made or natural disasters.