International star-chef team to gather in Lapland

On Friday, 16 of the world’s most renowned chefs are to travel to Lapland in order to spend the first weekend of September getting to know the local culinary culture.
     
The most famous chef in the group will probably be René Redzepi, the chef of the Michelin 2-star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, which was voted the best restaurant in the world in the 2010 San Pellegrino Awards.
      El Bulli, a Michelin 3-star restaurant in Spain run by chef de cuisine Ferran Adria, will be represented by Albert Adria, the chef's brother. El Bulli has frequently earned first place rankings among the world’s best restaurants, but this year it came second.
     
The Finnish representative will be Hans Välimäki, the chef de cuisine and owner of Chez Dominique in Helsinki, which was this year ranked 23rd among the World’s 50 best Restaurants, according to San Pellegrino.
      Apart from fishing and hunting game birds, the chefs will pick berries and mushrooms as well as meet some reindeer herders and their animals.
      Accommodation for the visitors will be provided in peaceful and well-appointed log cabins in the middle of a forest in the holiday resort of Levi in Western Lapland.
     
The weekend gets under way tomorrow, when the attendees will head up north by night train from Helsinki, and will culminate in Monday’s banquet, for which the participants will improvise a menu of ten dishes based on local foods.
      In addition to the chefs themselves, the group will also include journalists from major international media, for example Time Magazine.
     
The trip to Lapland will be the third instalment of the Cook It Raw culinary event that was launched in Copenhagen a year ago. In January, the chefs visited Friuli in Italia.
      Initially, Sweden was proposed as the third stage. However, Finland was chosen, as Sweden is already rather well-known in foodie circles, while Finland sounded more exotic and hence more interesting, reports freelance food writer Kenneth Nars, who is the organiser of the event in Finland.
     
In addition to private enterprises, the Cook It Raw event will be co-sponsored in Finland by for example the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Chez Dominique heads up the fine-dining charts (22.4.2009)

Links:
  Cook It Raw
  Noma
  Levi
  San Pellegrino Awards
  Chez Dominique
  El Bulli