A round table of the working group of the 'Estonian food 2015-2020' development plan being drafted under the aegis of the Estonian Ministry of Agriculture was held at the end of March to which New Nordic Food experts Jens Heed (from the Swedish Ministry for Rural Affairs) and Magnus Gröntoft (from the Secretariat of the Nordic Council of Ministers) were invited to share their knowledge and experience. The potential for Estonia to join the New Nordic Food programme in the event that the decision is made to continue with it in the forthcoming period was also discussed at the round table.
The years of looking for cooperation opportunities brought success in late June when the steering group of the New Nordic Food II programme confirmed that it would consider Estonia in its future work. This means that the steering group will encourage project managers to include Estonia in events and to create new cooperation networks in the Baltic Sea region.
Estonian chefs in Nordic countries
In 2008 the NCM Office in Estonia launched a project to introduce New Nordic Food and supported the in-service training of six Estonian chefs in top Nordic restaurants. The current head chef at the highly regarded Wicca restaurant at Laulasmaa Spa, Angelica Udeküll, was one of the participants and chose to train at Oaxen in the Stockholm archipelago.
"Seeing how many things can be found in nature was a revelation," tells Udeküll of her experiences in the Estonian travel magazine EstTraveller. "The mother-in-law of the restaurant's chef went for a walk by the sea and also visited the flowerbeds of the restaurant, where all the herbs and flowers used to decorate the dishes are picked. This really gave me a push and encouraged me to make a start on something I'd wanted to do for a long time – use ingredients that our ancestors knew as medicinal herbs and that most restaurants chefs were only dreaming about at the time."
Udeküll also says in EstTraveller that Estonian cuisine has become rather Nordic. "The way I see it, today's Estonian cuisine is a part of Nordic cuisine. /.../ I believe we're heading in the same direction as the Nordic countries, where the most important things are the way you think, the ability to use the gifts of nature and rediscovering historical techniques."
Chef Peeter Pihel, who has earned himself the title of Best Estonian Restaurant several times and now works in the top Swedish restaurant Fäviken Magasinet, also sought inspiration among Nordic island restaurants and producers. Estonian chefs have repeatedly used the opportunities offered by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Business and Industry for in-service training by top Nordic chefs and to invite Nordic experts to Estonia. The NCM Office in Estonia has organised a masterclass for vocational school students and food production, food safety and quality seminars, helped expand cooperation between companies and helped to launch broader cooperation between the Nordic countries and Estonia in the food sector.
New Nordic Food
The culinary and cultural cooperation New Nordic Food fostered by the Nordic Council of Ministers (i.e. the governments of the Nordic countries) since 2006 represents much more than just better and more informed eating: New Nordic Food unites identity, gastronomy, business, tourism, design and regional cooperation.
Estonian food culture is similar to that of the Nordic countries in many ways. Dimitri Demjanov from the Culinary Institute of Estonia has also said that leading figures in the world of Estonian gastronomy think about, prepare and season food according to the same principles as their counterparts in the Nordic countries.