Roland Trettl meets Danyel Couet & Paul Svensson

Roland Trettl meets Danyel Couet

Roland Trettl in Stockholm

Travel is an education – and it was in Stockholm that I first felt out of my depth. It was just before Midsummer night and I wanted to meet up with Danyel Couet and Paul Svensson in their ‘F12’ which is housed in a wing of the art academy, not far from the historic centre of Stockholm.

The ‘F12’ is a real hot spot and one of Stockholm’s trendiest addresses. It is flooded with daylight, an essential component of 1970s Scandinavian design. Everything is very, very beautiful but there was just one slight drawback: the Midsummer period is a special time of celebration in Sweden and all of the restaurants were stretched to their limit. This was reason enough for me to beat a hasty retreat and come back for a second attempt in September.

The ‘F12’ and its kitchens are certainly worth giving another go. Even though this second attempt began with a certain ‘disappointment’. I was sufficiently familiar with the reputation of the ‘F12’ – both in theory and in practice. A gala dinner was held to mark the awarding of a professorship to my teacher Eckart Witzigmann by Europe’s only state university of gastronomy in the Swedish town of Grythyttan and the two ‘F12’ strategists were involved in the event.

However, I only met them in passing. Both were very young and very hip – I thought great, you could certainly party with them in Stockholm once the cooking is done. But I was wrong. Both are happily married and spend all of their free time with their families. And of course there isn’t much free time left with all the cooking that goes on at the ‘F12’.

The lads certainly don’t make it easy for themselves. I would place their cuisine somewhere between Avantgarde and Fusion with 2 different forms of presentation in play. One type of menu is known as ‘traditional’ and the other as ‘innovative’. This combination was all the more evident when the two chefs participated in the Ikarus guest chef concept. This was a celebration of the F12’s cuisine and Danyel and Paul wanted to “up the ante”. The two approached the task with some trepidation and it was clear that they wanted to present some new creations as well as some more familiar ones. The dishes were presented with a fascinating and almost philosophical approach to cooking, staying true to the theoretical concept of the parallel menus.

In other words: there were 2 menus again. One menu listed a starter of ‘caviar, leek, potatoes’ while the other listed the starter as ‘leek, potatoes, caviar’. Similarly one menu offered ‘Winter apples, walnuts, scallops’ and another ‘scallops, Winter apples, walnuts’.
A menu is patient and you can write whatever you want. Indeed, we’ve all heard about the Emperor’s new clothes. But this is not the case here: it’s exciting to see how the two chefs create completely different taste experiences using the same products. The starter on one menu is served in a caviar tin as a brullée of potatoes and leeks covered with a thick layer of caviar; the same products in the other menu are presented as a leek roll with crème fraiche and pureed caviar with potato vinaigrette. Both are magnificent and both completely unique.

The same goes for the scallops. One dish comprises three fried scallops with a scallop cream and diced apple compote on top followed by apple agar-agar with crisp roasted walnuts and roasted onions and garlic. Version 2 is based on apple puree and apple vacuum-processed in its own juices with a tartar of scallops accompanied by walnut cream and walnut breadcrumbs.

It a fantastic culinary experience as well as an enlightening intellectual event to be able to taste how the same products can create such different taste experiences through the use of a different emphasis or slant and different cooking techniques. Everyone knows that just nine notes can be used to create an endless range of melodies – and the same is true of cooking. But it is certainly a real treat to spend an evening experiencing at first-hand how a chef can present the same theme in completely different ways.

At the ‘Ikarus’ in Salzburg, we want to present this highlight to our guests in its entirety. Danyel, Paul and I have therefore decided to blend together both menus to form a ‘Best Of’ menu. Given this end result, I can now say with absolute certainty: travel is an education.