It’s day six of the Equatorial Hotel’s Nordic Week in Ho Chi Minh City.

Visiting chefs Niclas Wahlstrom and Magnus Johansson are sitting at a corner table at Chit Chat at the Café with Equatorial Executive Chef Vincent Tan.

As I approach to begin the interview, I feel a pang of guilt; the Swedes are clearly exhausted. The coffee over which Wahlstrom is hunched appears to be his only lifeline, and Johansson, usually a giant of a man, seems to have shrunk in stature.

Packed lunch and dinner services, presiding over cooking classes, coaching a kitchen staff to whom liquorice mustard is likely as alien as Martian soufflé - it all has the chefs running on empty.

But then something happens. We start talking about food - Nordic food - and suddenly, the strawberry glow returns to Wahlstrom’s cheeks and Johansson perks up, assuming the (self-proclaimed) mantle of “tallest pastry chef in the world.”

The enthusiasm is mutual. Since dining at the Nordic Week press dinner, I’ve become smitten. Questioning Niclas Wahlstrom, the executive chef of Stockholm’s renowned Den Gyldene Freden, and Magnus Johansson, winner of the 2002 Culinary Olympics and World Cup and Nobel Prize dinner patisserie chef, is a rare opportunity to learn about new Nordic cuisine from two of its contemporary architects.

If you find yourself wondering what’s so enthralling about herring, reindeer and meatballs, think again. The Nordic region is in the midst of a culinary Renaissance, a rebirth of national cuisines that’s been quietly playing out for more than a decade and has established countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark as vanguards in the global trend of back-to-basics cooking.

“Even Paul Bocuse says that the culinary centre has moved from France up to Scandinavia,” said Johansson. “If that guy is saying that, there must be something going on up there.”

Paul Bocuse is of course one of the most influential chefs of the 20th century. As an innovator of nouvelle cuisine, it makes sense that he would single out Scandinavia. In its emphasis on fresh and simple local flavors, respect for (but not ironclad adherence to) tradition and sophisticated yet uncomplicated presentation, new Nordic cuisine shares the conceptual framework of Bocuse’s early work, but proceeds from distinctly regional traditions.

Lost and found

The new Nordic cuisine can be difficult to conceptualize, not least because so few are familiar with old Nordic cuisine. Even among foodies, the region was previously known for being unremarkable. Indeed, with the rebirth in full swing, it’s become a food writing cliché to express disbelief that a remarkable meal is Nordic in origin.

Am I really in Copenhagen? asks the writer. Impossible!

The reasons for Nordic cuisine’s arrested development are many. In the case of Sweden, Wahlstrom cites the flight of culinary knowledge that resulted from mass Swedish immigration through 1920, as well as the country’s continuing economic hardships. No matter the cause, the pattern has been similar: French influence throughout the 60s and 70s followed by a flirtation with a hodgepodge of world cuisines.

“During the 80s and 90s we did a lot of this fusion cooking,” Wahlstrom said. “I think the food didn’t have an identity. The food was a little bit whatever.”

Establishing that identity has become an imperative, and some chefs have gone to extremes in their pursuits. Danish food personality Claus Meyer, for one, searches the far corners of Nordic lands for unknown regional foods. He has even taken to aging local plum and apple balsamics as homegrown substitutes for Italian balsamic vinegars.

“The turning point for the revitalization of Spanish cuisine was innovation in restaurant cooking,” wrote Meyer on his personal website. “The New Nordic Cuisine, on the other hand is very much about the quality of primary produce.”

On this point, Wahlstrom agreed: “You want to go back to the basics, to the cleanness,” he said. “You want to know where the product is from. You serve the product as natural as you can and give the customers value for money.”

Along with natural local flavors, Wahlstrom says basic preparation methods - smoking, drying, salting, curing - identify the cuisine as Swedish. A good example is Wahlstrom’s Nordic Week main: (air-dried) lamb loin wrapped in a shroud of Parma ham, seasoned with garden herbs and dill sauce and served with seasonal vegetables.

“It’s all about the lamb and the dill,” Wahlstrom said. “That combination is the Swedish one. The ham helps the presentation of the dish because we can serve lamb in a different way and bring some other flavors to it, just to make it more interesting.”

The vegetables and dill sauce represent other hallmarks of new Nordic cuisine: an emphasis on light, healthful sides and a rejection of heavy French sauces.

Johansson, too, plays with tradition. While his raspberry-based parfait and sorbet were remarkable, his take on the blini offered the clearest evidence of imagination; he exchanged the traditional caviar and onion for raspberry, pecans and sugar.

“It tastes nice, but you’re not used to eating it as a dessert,” Johansson said. “It’s just another thing to think about and talk about.”

The Nordic gets its due

At the beginning of the interview, I questioned the chefs about a statement made by Marcus Samuelsson - the Gotenburg-raised chef who at 25 became head of New York’s Aquavit. In an interview with Gourmet magazine last year, Samuelsson claimed that fine dining in Sweden was strictly French 10 years ago.

“It’s been going on for a long time, I think,” asserts Johansson. “The French way of eating is not what we have in Sweden at the moment, and it hasn’t been like that for 15 years.”

When asked when the world first took note, Wahlstrom, Johansson and Tan all agree: the international cooking competitions.

Since 1991, Norway and France have been rivals at the biannual Bocuse D’Or, with either team finishing in the top spot - except for 1997, when Sweden took the prize. Altogether, Norway, Sweden and Denmark have together taken five first-place finishes, seven second-place finishes and three third-place finishes since the 1989 inaugural competition.

In 2004, Sweden became the first country to rack up back-to-back wins at the quadrennial International Exhibition of Culinary Art (IKA), better known as the Culinary Olympics. Last year, Norway walked away with the honors.

Next came the publications and guides. In 2006, Claus Meyer and René Redzepi’s Nordic-oriented Noma in Denmark landed on Restaurant magazine’s Top 50 list at number 33. This year, it ranked number three, finishing behind two molecular gastronomy eateries: Ferran Adria’s El Bulli in Roses, Spain, and Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, England.

Gradually, more than just outsiders took an interest. When it premiered in the United States in 2003, New Scandinavian Cooking with Andreas Viestad attracted five million American viewers, and has since aired in about 60 countries throughout its five seasons. In a relatively short time, the new Nordic cuisine had found its way from the insular realm of competitive kitchens to living rooms around the world.

If you cook it, they will come

But here’s the big question: will the cities of the Nordic become food destinations?

Niclas Wahlstrom thinks so. As Stockholm’s oldest unrenovated restaurant, Den Gyldene Freden has always been attractive to visitors, but Wahlstrom has seen signs that the word is getting out about new Nordic cuisine.

“Since I’ve started there, we’ve gone back to this Swedish authentic cuisine, more than the chef before me. I’ve seen that [the tourism] is increasing. For the evenings, more than 50 percent of our guests are tourists or foreigners.”

If establishing the Nordic region as a food centre is the goal, the New Nordic Kitchen Manifesto that emerged from the 2004 Nordic Cuisine Symposium might be the guiding light. The 10-point agenda lays out the tenets for a concerted movement and has garnered the full backing of the Council of Nordic Ministers.

The project is not without precedent. In 1973 Basque chefs, inspired by nouvelle cuisine, drafted a resolution to develop Spanish food along the same lines. Today, Nueva Basque cuisine is a fixture of the culinary world’s upper echelons.

One day soon, no matter where you’re from, you may not have to wait for a Scandinavian vacation or an annual food promotion. Getting great new Nordic might be as simple as heading downtown.

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