Project

Project Gothenberg Review at a Glance

Awards: 1 Michelin Stars

Rating: 86/100

Verdict: Project is a restaurant that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. The atmosphere is welcoming and relaxed, a place that instantly make you feel at home. The food in the tasting menu is well prepared and accessible, the flavors intriguing but also easy to understand. All of this is done at a reasonable price for Sweden where most Michelin restaurants start at SEK2,000+ if you want the full tasting menu. While the food did not touch the culinary highs you get at the best restaurants, I enjoyed my meal here quite a bit. Project’s one Michelin star is well deserved and it is a restaurant worth visiting if you find yourself in Gothenberg.

Price I Paid: SEK1,200

Would I revisit: No

Date Visited: May 2022

Value: 13/20

Project Gothenburg background

Project is one of five one star restaurants in Gothenburg, the second-largest city in Sweden. Rather than being part of a luxury hotel or restaurant group, Project is independently owned and run by the husband and wife team Cameron and Anna Irving with Cameron heading up the kitchen and Anna running the front of the house. Chef Irving’s food shows most of the hallmarks of the New Nordic movement with plenty of local ingredients, minimalistic plates, and lots of acidity. That said, I found the flavors much more accessible and less intellectual than most new Nordic cooking which was refreshing.

Anna’s FOH creates a relaxed setting despite the kitchen serving some very serious food. The dining room was booked up when we visited so we decided to enjoy the meal at the bar which provided a nice catbird seat of the action during dinner and a chance to interact with the charming owner. The dining room featured large open windows, funky decor, and wooden tables that made you feel at home throughout the night.

For the most part, a meal at the restaurant is a tasting menu only affair with the menu costing a reasonable (by Swedish standards), SEK1,200. The wine pairing came in at SEK 825 with a more exclusive package upping the cost to SEK 1300. This is about the going rate for wine in Sweden where a pairing typically costs 2/3rd or more of the food price. A pet peeve of mine, there was no list of wines by the glass, beer, or cocktails. Based on the owners suggestions, We enjoyed a local beer and a few gin & tonics featuring a local gin which were priced fairly.

What we ate at Project restaurant

A meal at Project kicks off with a series of well-conceived snacks, the first of which was an oyster creme with caviar and Thai basil. The caviar was a bit lost for me but I found the flavor profule to be nice and bright which was a good way to wake up the palate. Next was a small bite of langoustine claw, carrot & truffle - I was very impressed with the texture of the crisp but thought its flavor was a tad assertive as I couldn’t detect much of the langoustine in the bite. The third snack was a puree Jerusalem artichoke & trout roe. This was my favorite of the opening nibbles, the artichoke puree packed with flavor and possessing a silky texture. This contrasted brilliantly with the bright pop of the marinated trout roe and artichoke crisps. Superb.

Lastly, we had Swedish squid & star anise dashi (not pictured) where you were encouraged to stir the raw squid around in the hot dashi to lightly poach it before eating it and slurping the dashi. This worked quite well for me, the squid was cut extremely thin to avoid any rubbery texture and the dashi had a very pleasing star anise flavor which is a favorite spice of mine. Overall, this was an impressive set of snacks which showed the kitchen has some real technical chops with the textures on the various bites being particularly well executed.

After the snacks, we were served the first real course, white asparagus with apple, hops & wild garlic. This was quite interesting as the kitchen decided to serve the asparagus cold which seemed to intensify the white asparagus flavor in a good way. With how frequently asparagus is used this time of year I have become quite jaded on asparagus so this was merely good rather than outstanding. Somewhat strangely for a nordic restaurant, the white asparagus was sourced from the Netherlands even though I had some excellent spears from Gotland at AIRA a week or so earlier.

Bread was served as a course, an excellent slice of sourdough baked in house using a near decade-old sourdough culture with high-quality butter. While not fresh out of the oven, this was a great piece of bread which almost goes without saying in Sweden.

After the bread, we transitioned to the first of two seafood dishes, monkfish shiitake beurre blanc & bergamot. I always find monkfish an interesting choice for fine dining as its meaty texture is always far more memorable than its flavor. Here the kitchen took a classic beurre blanc and infused it with shiitakes, adding additional umami notes to the rich sauce. This was a novel idea but I thought the mushroom flavor was a tad strong and the sauce could have used a more acidic zip. The bergamot in the description was also lost on me.

We continued on with an interesting dish of grilled scallop, cucumber, pickled ginger & green shiso. The Project team showed great care on the preparation of the scallop, grilling and then slicing it into thin cross sections. Thethe grilled flavor came through very nicely and complimented the natural flavor of the shellfish as the kitchen managed not to overcook the delicate shellfish. The cucumber broth provided a nice refreshing counter note to the scallops but I could have used just a little more zip from the pickled ginger (which was a very smart choice in the dish). Bonus points for using a functional presentation (something that is rarely the case) as each scallop slice had a bit of ginger and shiso leaf to make sure each bite had the full flavor profile.

The main course was 45-day dry aged strip loin with shimeji, black garlic & sauce royale which showed off the good and bad of Chef Irving’s reductionist style of cooking. The good, you have a wonderful piece of beef paired with an immensely flavorful sauce. Sauce royale is traditionally served as part of the classic French hare royale dish and is notorious for being incredibly time-consuming to make and one tricky to pull off convincingly. That Project was able to pull off this sauce so well while keeping the plate balanced is a testament to the technical chops of the kitchen team. On the downside, I thought this could have used something besides the beef and bit of mushroom to make the dish feel like a more complete main course. This is a more stylistic critique though and this was a tremendous dish nonetheless.

Prior to dessert, the kitchen sent out an intriguing composed cheese dish based on Gammel Knas cheese, red onion & dried blueberry. Gammel knas is a fresh interpretation of Havarti from top Swedish supplier Arla Unika that has been developed from specific cultures so it is ideal for a long aging process (24 months here). Typically I associate such aged cheese with firm textures but at Project they turned it into a creme which I thought was quite smart. The cheese is strong but they balanced it very delicately with a red onion compote and a dried blueberry disc which add just a hint of sweetness and great texture. This was a very impressive cheese dish which I typically find forgettable. Great work from the kitchen.

Pre-dessert was a foam and sorbet made of miso and blood orange. This was a simple and incredibly pleasing dessert, the flavors bringing me back to childhood memories of eating creamsicles but with more complexity from the miso. The flavor profile actually reminded me a bit of a superb pre-dessert at Waldhotel Sonnora with the version at Project packing a little less remarkable flavor but having a more intriguing taste.

The main dessert was strawberries with pistachio, yuzu & olive oil with a shot of an intense consommé that was made using similar flavors. This had very good refreshing flavors but was a tad barren for the final, and only, dessert as it took only a few spoonfuls to make it through. The consommé was an interesting way to conclude the meal as it really cleansed the palate and you could detect the fattiness from the olive oil which played wonderfully with the fruity flavors.