On fire, man: Niklas Ekstedt cooks over wood-grills
(Picture: Press handout )A chef known as the “godfather of wood-fired cooking” is to open his first London restaurant at the Great Scotland Yard hotel, around the corner from Tom Kerridge’s Bar and Grill.
The Michelin-starred Niklas Ekstedt – who is a regular on Saturday Kitchen and last year starred alongside Heston Blumenthal in Netflix and Channel 4 cookery show Crazy Delicious – will open Ekstedt at The Yard this September.
The Whitehall opening will offer Ekstedt’s signature “old Nordic” cooking, which sees seasonal ingredients cooked over wood-grills; these will form part of an open kitchen that will sprawl into the restaurant, and dishes will include the likes of reindeer with black pudding, smoked celeriac and salt-baked root vegetables, oysters cooked using in flaming butter, using a flambadou – a kind of conical, cast-iron baster – and a cep soufflé served with birch ice cream.
Ekstedt, who incidentally is a keen skateboarder, said of the news: “I’m delighted to be working with Great Scotland Yard Hotel to realise my dream of opening a restaurant in London.
“Great Scotland Yard Hotel is exactly the kind of place I had hoped to open Ekstedt in London. It is a building steeped in history, and you can’t beat the location. This is a huge moment for me, I have been in love with the UK for years, my family moved here when we were younger, and London has always felt like a second home for me. The team and I can’t wait to start cooking”.
The 42-year-old Ekstedt first came to global attention when he opened his debut restaurant Niklas, then aged just 21, which quickly became known as Sweden’s best place to eat, while his current Swedish opening, Stockholm’s Ekstedt, has held a Michelin star since 2013. He has previously cooked at pop-ups across London, including at Marylebone’s Carousel, but the hotel project marks his first proper roots in the capital. The announcement also marks a new step for the five star Hyatt; its previous celebrity chef incumbent was Robin Gill, whose The Yard by Robin Gill restaurant had a troubled time and was met with some scathing reviews.
