Hip new Nordic cuisine showcased at Danish food event in Seoul


Who would have thought that trees, hay and ashes would be the nouveau chic eats of the year?

Yet, here it was, on a plate, a piece of very black bread, so black it resembled a hunk of charcoal.

There was a reason why it was black. Not only had the bread been made with hay, leek and onion ash, according to AOC executive chef Ronni Mortensen, it had also been sprayed with “black burned vegetables.”

“We like the nature-like thing,” explained Mortensen of the Michelin-starred Copenhagen-based restaurant.

This was what the world had been buzzing about. This was an example of new Nordic cuisine, and, believe it or not, it tasted pretty good. 

Savory, smoky and crunchy, the bread possessed the texture and flavor of a nubby, burnt crisp blackened edge of a slab of bacon.

“We use a lot of ashes and a lot of hay,” said Mortensen, in Seoul on Monday for a food showcase held by the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, in describing one of the trends of new Nordic cuisine to the Korean press.

He explained how the essence of birch trees is used to make “birch ice cream” at AOC, where small pieces of trees are coated in a food oil as part of a process that results in something called “birch juice.”

The whole thing sounded somewhat mysterious and complicated, but unfortunately, was not on the day’s menu.

So what, exactly, is new Nordic?

New Nordic started out as a manifesto that a group of the region’s chefs, including the celebrated Rene Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen, pledged themselves to in the autumn of 2004.

The manifesto focused on creating cuisine from seasonal, local ingredients using techniques that fused Nordic culinary traditions with “impulses from abroad.”

“We like the pure taste,” Mortensen elaborated.

In fact, purity and nature are recurring themes of what is blossoming into a global culinary movement.

The edible dirt featured at Noma and its chef Rene Redzepi had the food world buzzing, and it was that and Noma’s other unique formations of nature, where roots and vegetables culled straight from the earth were presented in an organic flora-and-fauna-style way, that played a huge role in spreading the new Nordic message abroad.

Noma, which opened first in Copenhagen in 2004 and was awarded two Michelin stars in 2008, won the coveted Restaurant magazine’s San Pellegrino “Best Restaurant in the World” title three years in a row as of 2010, succeeding the legendary and now-closed El Bulli in Spain, which held the title for four consecutive years prior.

Now Noma’s influence and the new Nordic aesthetic it represents has traveled as far afield as America, where the cuisine is popping up on plates here and there.

Therefore it came as no surprise when the Danish Agriculture and Food Council alongside AOC executive chef Mortensen and the Crown Princess of Denmark, Mary, showcased new Nordic cuisine to the South Korean press at the Grand Hyatt Seoul on Monday.

So now that we’ve had a taste, straight from the source, will it catch on?

By Jean Oh (oh_jean@heraldcorp.com)