Elvira Lindqvist

When we talked to chef Elvira Lindqvist almost two years ago, she was feeling at home at Fotografiska. Every face was familiar, as was every corner of the brick building hanging by the water in central Stockholm. If there’s a lesson learned from recent times is that life is never predictable. It flows and it changes, defying our own inertia. And if they say you should return to a place you’ve been and see how you yourself have changed, we went back to Elvira. Who took the wave of moving homes when it came her way.

Invited by designer and silversmith Sebastian Schildt, Elvira did not join the team at restaurant Oxenstiernan in Östermalm. She built it. Or, more accurately, she is building it.

The idea for the space and restaurant was developed by Sebastian. As the owner, and having worked closely with a lot of Swedish arts and crafts people through his gallery, Sebastian wanted a place where form and function would go together. Where aesthetics are strong but conceptual and fill a purpose bigger than their looks. According to head chef Elvira, the whole dining room is a living concept.

“Everything from top to bottom is made in Sweden, except the soundproofing which is made in Finland out of renewable materials.”

What Elvira and Sebastian found in each other was the same vision with different outlets. Sebastian wanted Swedish creators to have a natural showroom for their products, helping small industries thrive. Elvira was at the time extremely engaged in her work with sustainability at Fotografiska and wouldn’t move to just any restaurant.

“When he started speaking about the restaurant it felt like he was talking about the same thing that I do, only I do it with food, working with as local as we can. With farmers and small industries.”

With her long career in the restaurant industry, creative leader Elvira wanted the challenge of starting a restaurant. The partnership with Sebastian, an industry outsider, allowed the freedom for the restaurant to find its own path. The rule book was buried somewhere in the garden that surrounds the old building in Stockholm along with the squared ideas of how things are supposed to be done. Both Elvira and Sebastian have accepted sacrificing effectiveness for the fun of finding out for yourself. Oxenstiernan isn’t just the teenager looking for itself, it is the child looking to change the world by doing it.

“It’s a lot of giving and taking but it’s a lot of fun doing it with someone that doesn’t have a clear idea of what it’s going to be like.”

The hues of sustainability

While the conversation around sustainability in the food business is long and wide, there are many overlooked aspects of it. Sustainability isn’t just how you treat your products but building a system that is viable in all its angles.

One of the industry’s worst kept secrets is a generalized culture of overwork and abuses with famous stories of high-end sustainability restaurants mistreating their staff. Long gone are the days of the serious chef willing to step on anybody’s toes to make good food. Under Elvira’s leadership, it’s important to be a team worker, to be nice and open, to have fun and to want to engage and learn from one another.

“I am that kind of person that really likes laughing at work, to have a good time and if we can build that mindset among the staff then the guests will feel it as well. They will feel at home and it will be a nice environment for them to be in and automatically they will like it. That’s the mindset for us.”

With the millennial generation at the forefront of the workforce, the old rules don’t apply anymore. The huge deficit between the available job positions and the people willing to work, worsened by the pandemic and people who left the industry, makes it nowadays more important than ever for employers to understand what their employees really value.

Oxenstiernan turned one year old recently and my overall feeling is that this restaurant, hidden among trees, is great at doing exactly that. Being a home. To Elvira, to Sebastian, to sustainability and through their love and investment, to all the guests that have the honor of being invited.

With the millennial generation at the forefront of the workforce, the old rules don’t apply anymore. The huge deficit between the available job positions and the people willing to work, worsened by the pandemic and people who left the industry, makes it nowadays more important than ever for employers to understand what their employees really value.

“If the restaurants want to have staff, they really have to think about how they treat the staff. It’s the young people coming into the business that don’t want that anymore so they are really helping the older generation to change.” Elvira is unambiguous “The old guard has to think about what mindset they want the people to come into work with and also how many hours they are working. Someone who’s 20 doesn’t obviously want to work every saturday and sunday. They want to have something outside the workplace as well and that’s really good. That’s something that pushes us forward as well. It’s a good thing.”

Needless to say that on building Oxenstiernan’s team, reasonable working hours and conditions are the main dish. A just work environment makes creativity thrive: “if I were to push my team down all the time they wouldn’t show me what they know, I wouldn’t learn from them. You are automatically better if you are not afraid. It feels obvious but in the kitchen it hasn’t always been like that so i think it’s just positive to allow people to be themselves and be free and not be afraid.”

Elvira is convinced the pandemic was important for work sustainability and ethics. After long months of working only a small part of the hours they worked before, a lot of chefs found themselves fond of life outside the restaurant. Suddenly it was no longer about showing how invested you are by constantly being serious and putting every living minute into your art. Family, hobbies, sports and mainly the freedom to do other things brings novelty to the kitchen. To try and fail, makes for better chefs and ultimately for better food.

“I want to show that it is fun to work as a chef. I love it, I really enjoy going to the kitchen. I want to have fun! If I can spread that into the group, if I can laugh, if I can show that you don’t have to be a really uptight and serious person to be good, they will follow.”

The orchestra takes form

The Perfect Celeriac Fourth

A big part of building a restaurant is finding the space, finding the name and finding the concept. When Elvira joined the project all of that was already defined.

The oldest parts of the building date back to the 18th century, when the nobles in Stockholm had the habit of building garden houses spread around the different parts of the city. The old farm, where the restaurant exists, was built in the Eastern District of Stockholm, presently known as Östermalm, and came eventually to the hands of Sebastian Schildt, who wanted to honor its history. Ence the name: Oxenstiernan, like the original building.

“He had a very clear picture of what he wanted the dining room to look like but then the food concept, how to build the staff, that he gave to me.”

Working sustainably implies a good proximity to the source, not only physically but personally. Chef Elvira had already attracted a handful of like minded producers with her sustainability projects at Fotografiska, and it was only natural that they followed her into her new sustainability temple.

“A lot of the producers come to us to show us this really good product that they have.” Elvira explains “It is all seasonal. We get a list every week and then we cook after that.”

The menu changes accordingly, with items staying longer in the menu during the wintertime. During the summer, there is generally greater variation and a few items that get on and off the menu as fast as lightning strikes. This swing of the seasons is a great match to Elvira’s style.

“I love the idea of killing your darlings. When you do something nice, you really enjoy cooking it but then after a week or two it’s like ok, now we know this, we wanna do something else.”

I had the pleasure of having lunch at Oxenstiernan in December last year. As I walked from the bus in my big blue winter jacket, my cheeks were cold and the tip of my nose was red like it usually becomes. In the garden, inside the wooden walls that mark the frontiers of the place, I was received in a cosy christmas market. I walked around while waiting for my friends, wobbling between wanting to see the small producers selling fresh articles and wanting to warm myself by the fireplace. Right as I was getting into the yellow house that hosts the restaurant, I met Elvira, who received me like I was coming into her own place.

Elvira always mentions her team because like the orchestra she is building, nobody works alone.

Elvira describes her selected dish with four words: nerdery on a plate. So if you have ever wanted to stand side by side with one of the most accomplished chefs in Sweden, pay attention to a study of a true culinary geek. Her dish is all things celeriac – a symphony, if you will, where every new compass of the music is a new side of the vegetable. Orchestrated by Elvira and her creative team, the dish is the result of four different cooking techniques, made primarily from one ingredient: the celeriac.

“It is not often you create a dish from a single vegetable. But it is fun and necessary for creativity to really deep dive into something.”

What started as an experiment to explore new ways to cook different vegetables ended up being a success for Elvira and her team.

“We have not had the time to do it before, but I am so glad we did it. You get easily stuck in just one or two ways of cooking a vegetable.”

The four tempos of this symphony:

1. cream, made of fermented celeriac leftover
2. butter sauce, from the fermentation syrup
3. rose shaped bundles, made of lathed celeriac
4. thin white sheets of pickled celeriac in Champagne vinegar

To add something extra to the dish, black currant was featured, bringing acidity, and bush cress was used for garnishing – adding to the green paint of the handmade unique plate.

“When creating the dish we played with the idea of only using one vegetable. It is easy for everything to turn into a fruit salad due to adding more and more greens. Which can be amazing, but we wanted to build a plate with one vegetable and several different textures and tastes.”

Elvira lights up when talking about using a lathe. She explains there is so much you can do with a vegetable when using a lathe, such as pasta for example. Fermentation is also a technique the chef has been using for some time and it is something that considerably adds to her sustainable and circular cooking philosophy that has permeated her whole career.

“I wish more people used fermentation at home. It is such an easy way to use old vegetables instead of throwing them away. It is good for both the environment and your stomach!”

She explains that the fermentation fluids are delicious, and nutritious and make an excellent base in everything, from sauces and broth to drinks and cocktails. During the winter, celeriac is one of the go-to vegetables at the Oxenstierna restaurant. An ever-present product in Sweden, celeriac is largely available and dear among chefs because of its endless possibilities.

When running a Michelin green star restaurant, in an 18th-century legacy building, that is a haven for form and function through different artists, it is hard not to be influenced when creating a dish.

“To get to work and grow alongside a professional artist is so exciting. It becomes a very rewarding symbiosis where all kinds of artists are added to the mix and find ways to get all the different elements to work together.”

The symbiosis extends from artist to object, culminating in the unique piece of art that is the handmade plate. It becomes more than a beautiful plate to present the chef’s craftsmanship – it becomes a part of the canvas. Elvira explains that a dish never looks the same on every plate. Just as the plates are unique the same goes for the plating, making it impossible to disassociate culinary and visual art.

“This creates a work environment I can thrive in. I learn from my team and I make sure they know it is not my food we are cooking, it is ours!”

To Build A Home

I had the pleasure of having lunch at Oxenstiernan in December last year. As I walked from the bus in my big blue winter jacket, my cheeks were cold and the tip of my nose was red like it usually becomes. In the garden, inside the wooden walls that mark the frontiers of the place, I was received in a cozy Christmas market. I walked around while waiting for my friends, wobbling between wanting to see the small producers selling fresh articles and wanting to warm myself by the fireplace. Right as I was getting into the yellow house that hosts the restaurant, I met Elvira, who received me like I was coming into her own place.

The dining room is minimalist in both decoration and colors but light floods through a tall window covering almost the whole back wall. The tall wooden ceiling is supported by thin pillars that divide the room evenly. We were shown to our table, round and placed in a corner, and taken delicately through our meal. The food was magical, with vegetables taking up a big portion of the table. I ate a Jerusalem artichoke soup I have a hard time forgetting about and shared a bottle of orange wine with my friends, feeling like I was myself inviting them into my own house.

Oxenstiernan turned one year old recently and my overall feeling is that this restaurant, hidden among trees, is great at doing exactly that. Being a home. To Elvira, to Sebastian, to sustainability, and through their love and investment, to all the guests that have the honor of being invited.

Words by Madalena Vilar. Photography by Johan Ståhlberg.