NEW NORDIC #3

American food and beverage research firm Datassential has been monitoring menu sizes for the past 15 years. In 2021, it found six out of ten eateries reduced the number of dishes on offer.

It begs the question: Is the rest of the culinary world finally catching up with the Nordics?

For The Love Of Local Produce

The latest addition to the New Nordic dining landscape is Freyja in Melbourne’s central business district. Beginning life in mid-2022, Freyja is described as bringing the New Nordic approach to Australian dining and produce.

It is this blending of the philosophies and techniques that has won over diners. What it really demonstrates is the universality of the New Nordic cuisine and how easily it is transplanted into a country far removed from its origin, simply by applying its cornerstone ideas to locally available ingredients.

Owner Soren Trampedach promised as much at its opening, saying Freyja would deliver the attention to seasonality and produce that defines contemporary Nordic cooking.

“It’s about honesty in food and ingredients. It’s not mass market; it’s about local producers who we know,” he said.

Freyja’s menu underscores this point by listing, in full, the suppliers with whom the restaurant works, while the presence of iconic Indigenous ingredients such as Murray cod, finger lime and Tasmanian mountain pepper in the venue’s dishes is proof of the New Nordic philosophy at work in Australia.

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