Skåne Tranås — a quiet, green town in the south of Sweden — is home to Daniel Berlin and the restaurant that bears his name. Inspired by the seasons, Berlin prepares food either grown in the restaurant’s kitchen garden or foraged and hunted from the surrounding countryside and coastline. In 2018, Berlin was awarded his second Michelin star.

Hesperios editor in chief, Autumn Hrubý, first visited Daniel Berlin on a summer evening three years ago and has been returning ever since. “Bring the ones you love,” she says.

Images from a recent visit follow, along with an interview Hesperios conducted shortly after.

Hesperios

Can you tell us about your early experiences in professional kitchens? Who were your mentors?

Daniel Berlin

I started as an intern when I was seventeen at a restaurant called Petri Pumpa. It was run by Thomas Drejing who is iconic in Swedish gastronomy. I stayed with him for a couple of years, and it was during that time that my interest for produce and gastronomy really started to grow.

Hesperios

Your menu relies heavily on local, seasonal produce, with many of your ingredients coming from your own kitchen garden and from your own foraging and hunting. Can you tell us a little about that process? Have you had any surprise successes? Have there been any surprise failures?

Berlin

I believe that nothing really turns out quite the way you plan it. When you make a conscious choice to work with seasonal, wild produce, anything can happen. For me, that is a big reason why I love what we do. You have to be able to adapt to new situations and find new ways to work around eventual problems and try things you didn’t think were possible from the start. Failures strengthen you, and make you grow!

Hesperios

What’s your favorite season? In terms of your menus, do you feel restricted by winter and liberated by spring?

Berlin

I think you always long for the seasons that you aren’t in at the moment. Of course, it’s a lot tougher in February, March, and April when the availability of fresh produce is basically nonexistent, but at the same time, the shortage pushes you to be more creative in your gastronomy. To have everything is in many ways too simple for me. If you limit yourself, you have to challenge yourself to work with uncharted ideas.

Hesperios

What can you tell us about the process of developing a dish? Is there a long process of refining? Would you ever have an idea in the morning and then serve it in the evening?

Berlin

It’s often a quite long process but our way of working is built upon a system where we can change different components on a daily basis. The fundamental idea behind a certain dish is the same, but the raw material is changeable. You can say that we write our play in January, but we switch the actors during the course of the year. On the other hand, we
don’t make changes in the menu just for the sake of change — if we alter anything in a dish, it’s always to improve it for the better.

Hesperios

The theme of this issue is foundations — what would you say is the foundation of your restaurant and work? What’s important to you and your kitchen?

Berlin

It’s very important for me to run a restaurant that is transparent in the way that we do business, so that we can develop and improve our industry.

Hesperios

Certain dishes seem to capture the imagination of diners and the press. I’m thinking of frogs legs and parsley sauce at Bernard Loiseau, for example, or roasted bone marrow with parsley salad at St. John. It seems that your blackened celeriac has had a similar sort of success. Why that dish, do you think?

Berlin

Because it’s simply put — just a celeriac, served in a caring and delicate way with an apparent idea around the whole serving. Basically, we treat it as a piece of exclusive meat. This treatment of “simple” vegetables is a way to create a better balance in the menus of gastronomic restaurants, to lift the focus from the meats.

Hesperios

And do you still read reviews?

Berlin

Yes!

Hesperios

Elsewhere in this issue, we are doing an interview with Lena Willhammar, the designer of your crockery, whom we discovered while visiting your restaurant. How do her plates, bowls, and jugs inform your dishes?

Berlin

Most often my inspiration sprouts from a feeling I get when I view or feel a piece from Lena. It can be a specific border on a plate, a certain depth or weight or thickness of an object. I love the fact that Lena’s ceramics are distinct and clear without suffocating what we choose to serve out of them. For me, it feels as though my food and Lena’s ceramics play hand in hand in a certain symbiosis where one helps the other in expression and vice versa.

Hesperios

Autumn, our editor in chief, has said that visiting your restaurant in Skåne Tranås was one of the most memorable dining experiences of her life. Will you share a memorable dining experience that has inspired you?

Berlin

A couple of years ago, I visited Eleven Madison Park. The incredible warmth that surrounded me during my experience really had an impact on me. It was a warmth in hospitality that should be impossible at a restaurant of that size. It was finely tuned, elegant, and enveloping.

Hesperios

Your dining room holds fourteen; your mother takes care of the kitchen garden as well as serving customers; your dad’s the sommelier; and you even serve some of the dishes personally. Though it’s still formal, dining at Daniel Berlin is a friendlier, more personal affair than it might be in other Michelin-starred restaurants. Why so, do you think?

Berlin

I believe that a restaurant is always evolving. My parents are always a part of the team. During the days, they come and go as they please, and help us in any way they can, but it’s not a guarantee that they are here all evenings of the week. They also deserve time off, even if they are technically “family.” I have very professional co-workers in the
restaurant, but my parents contribute to a more relaxed and down-to-earth experience in the team, and of course for our guests. We want to disarm our guests when they arrive. Many times, people who visit us are a bit nervous and uncomfortable, and it’s important for us to deliver an experience that is professional but at the same time personal.
We make sure that our guests feel at ease and at home. For us, a great service experience is far from stiff. My parents are very important to both me and the restaurant, and I hope they continue to be there for us and support us.

Hesperios

You’ve said elsewhere that you want to say something with your cooking that no else can. Edward Hopper once said, “If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” Why did you choose food as your medium?

Berlin

I realized that expressing myself through food was the creative outlet that I was best suited for. I loved the environment in restaurants, and the fact that your success relied on what you delivered from day to day. Success in a restaurant can be achieved regardless of who you are or what your background is. It is, and was, fair play and I liked it from the very beginning.