Frantzen
Frantzen review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin stars, #21 Worlds 50 Best
+Every single dish was a hit. The worst dish was still excellent and the best dishes sublime.
+The consistently high standard was not the result of a lack of ambition from the kitchen - flavor combinations were exciting and unexpected and always worked.
+Front and back of house blend seamlessly together to create a flawless experience.
-It is expensive. Like really expensive. But worth it.
Review Rating: 100/100
Verdict: Frantzen was my favorite meal ever. It is hard to really categorize Chef Björn Frantzén’s cooking as he does not appear beholden to any one cuisine or concept. He sources ingredients from the Nordics but not exclusively so, also using ingredients from further afield. Some of his dishes seem inspired by Japanese cuisine’s minimalism and purity of flavors while others feature uncouth rich sauces that would not be out of place in a classic French dish (sometimes in the same dish like a chawanmushi with foie gras and aged pork). The only unifying theme between all of the dishes from my meal is that Chef Frantzen appears to be obsessed with creating the best food possible, no matter the province of the ingredient or technique. This obsession creates some of the best food I have ever had, bar none. A captivating dining experience that somehow justifies the €350 bill.
Price I paid: 3,500 SEK / €350
Value: 10/20
Frantzen Background
Restaurant Frantzén is the eponymous restaurant of Chef Bjorn Frantzen and the only restaurant that has earned the ultimate three stars from Michelin in Sweden. Chef Frantzén opened his restaurant (named Frantzén/Lindeberg at the time) with his pastry chef and business partner Daniel Lindberg in 2008 and acclaim quickly claim, earning two stars in 2010 and climbing all the way up to number 12 in the Worlds 50 Best list a few years later. Lindeberg left the restaurant in 2013 and today runs a bakery outside of Stockholm in Saltsjö-boo. Despite his partner’s departure, Chef Frantzén pressed on and even relocated his restaurant to its current location in 2016. Shortly after reopening in this new location, the restaurant earned its third star from Michelin. When I visited the head chef and kitchen team were headed up by Marcus Jernmark who managed a high wire act of splendid dish after dish.
The move to a new location was more than just cosmetic - it allowed Frantzén to offer a completely new dining experiences which was part of the reason I loved the meal so much. Rather than sitting in one place for the entire meal, there is a casual lounge area on the top floor of the restaurant where canapes and dessert pastries are served. The main meal takes place in a dining room which is really more of one giant open kitchen, ringed by a kitchen counter with stools. Many of the courses are served directly from the kitchen by the chefs. Further blending the front and the back of the house, both the kitchen and the servers wear the same uniforms. The overall effect was a completely seamless experience where all the restaurant workers meld together - you don’t know who is FOH or who is BOH, just that all of your needs are taken care of and you are eating flawless food.
This is Scandanavia and Frantzén is a three Michelin star restaurant so the bill is hefty - 3,500 SEK or €350. I did not partake but the booze is equally expensive with mark-ups being close to double what it would cost you in Europe. In my mind, it is almost impossible to justify such a high price but somehow Frantzén does.
Review of what I ate at Frantzen
A meal at Frantzen starts in the lounge where canapes and welcome drinks are served. From left to right the initial bites included a trout roe tartlet, sweet corn and foie gras macaron, and finally a crispy potato, vendace roe, creme fraiche, pickled onion. Each of these nibbles was a top-class bite. One of my favorites amuse bouches of all time was a foie gras macaron with garam masala at Cheval Blanc - the macaron here, which the kitchen constantly changes, was every bit its equal.
The lounge includes a working counter where the various bites are prepared. In addition to this practical purpose, the counter also features a chilled box where the chefs showcase all of the ingredients that will be featured over the course of the meal (pictured in the background section). While they walk through the various dishes they also serve you another canape which on my visit was a celeriac tart with black truffle (pictured above). All that truffle in a canape made for a nice luxurious start to the meal.
After the celeriac tart, I moved to the dining room (really an open kitchen surrounded by a chef’s counter) for the first course which was a scallop crudo with salted tomato and plum water, purple radish, and garum. This was the perfect way to start the tasting menu, light with some acidity to wake up the palate. I have seen a few versions of this dish at Frantzen that combines different raw seafood with radish - I was quite happy to have the scallop version as it had excellent flavor (sourced from Norway). The broth was delicate and heightened the natural flavor of the scallop.
Second course was blue lobster, crispy rice, artichoke emulsion. Again this was an exceleent dish with lots of interesting textures, flavors and of course wonderful luxurious lobster from Norway. I am always skeptical of crispy / puffed rice in dishes but it worked very well here with plenty of texture but without being off putting.
Similar to the scallop dish, Frantzen’s menu typically features a chawanmushi (a savory Japanese egg custard). When I visited my chawanmushi had steamed king crab, foie gras, pak choy, aged pork, and truffle broth. This was a very rich dish, with three huge chunks of king crab in a rich, fatty broth with strong notes of the aged pork. The chawanmshi’’s texture was creamy and smooth, packing the dish with umami to the dish. If I was to nit pick, the crab itself got a bit overpowered by the assertive broth and rich foie gras.
Even better than the initial dishes was a piece of cod with frantzen prestige caviar, sake, whey, razor clams, sprouted walnuts. Again the kitchen showed off its ability to make complex and satisfying broths, this time featuring sake, whey, razor clam, and a bit of nutiness from the walnut. The cod was the perfect vehicle to transpot the sauce to the diner. Bringing it all together was an ample helping of the restaurant’s own caviar, spooned on top of the cod in front of the diner and adding its signature dose of salinity.
The seafood parade continued with another stunner, monkfish, fermented mushroom tea and jerulsalem artichoke miso. If you ever wondered how much umami flavor you could pack into one plate this dish seems to provide the answer. Monkfish is known as the poor man’s lobster and does not often find its way onto Michelin star menus but worked very well with the fermented mushroom broth - I particulary liked the Monkfish’s dense, firm texture with the soft thinly sliced mushroom. Another treat on this dish was the Hungarian honey truffle. Less famous than its white and black cousins, the Hungarian honey truffle is a completely different expirence than other truffles. Rather than having an intense aromatic flavor, it is far more about the taste as it offers a slight nutty flavor at the start before transistioning to intense honey notes on the finish. The honey truffle worked particulary well here, a logical pair with the tea flavors in the broth.
The next course was labeled on the menu as onion, licorice, almond but was really just the best onion soup you could imagine. A lesson in how a chef can elevate a humble ingredient like the onion. This also provided a nice bridge to the next dish which was french toast grand tradition 2008, truffle, vache rosse cheese, and vinegar. Frantzen’s french toast has been covered ad nauseam on the internet and been on the menu since 2008. There is a good reason for that - Chef Björn Frantzén does not go for subtleness with this dish and instead opts to punch you in the face with flavor. Fried brioche, hollowed out and filled with caramelized onions and vacca rossa parmesan cheese, topped with a precariously balanced stack of truffles and a few drops of 100-year-old balsamic vinegar to balance out the richness. World-class comfort food that anyone can appreciate.
I am not a guinea fowl expert but this dish of guinea fowl with roasted pine nut and yellow pea condiment, griolles, and fermented pepper jus was just fantastic. The meat was nice and moist, the peas bright with great texture and flavor coming from the roasted pine nuts. The real star of the dish was a jus which took your normal standard jus up several notches with the inclusion of fermented pepper which added many layers of complexity. This was leagues beyond the guinea fowl dish I had a few months prior at three star Lameloise in France.
The main dessert was called salted carrot and tea tea tea and it really featured three mini-desserts: a tea-cup with a quenelle of salted carrot ice cream that was topped with a milky oolong oil and spring flowers, an earl grey tea mousse with fresh nordic blueberries, and lastly a Matcha waffle topped with honey and bee pollen. Even for someone who does not enjoy tea, this was a tremendous dessert. The favorite of the three was the matcha waffle which was served piping hot, only moments out of the waffle maker, and had a nice complex flavor from the use of matcha in the batter.
The pastry section could not be limited to one dessert so the meal ended back where it started, the lounge. This time in place of the savory snacks, there was bevy of sweet treats - fresh nordic raspberries over a champagne jelly, a tray of Madeleine’s fresh out of the oven, and numerous other smaller treats which I happily asked for one of each of. All of these sweets were superb, the very best they could be. The raspberries in the teacup were the single best raspberries I have ever had - I would happily have been served a pint of them with no treatment from the kitchen they were so good. Madeleine’s are a common bite at the end of a Michelin meal but in all the times I have been served them, Frantzen was the first to bother baking them so fresh they were hot to the touch. The other bites all struck a wonderful balance between tasting good and featuring original flavors. Overall, a tremendous end to a transcendent meal.