Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MICHELIN

First Swedish woman wins Michelin star

Three restaurants in Malmö in southern Sweden have become the first in the city to be awarded a Michelin star, with one head chef the first woman in the country to score the top culinary honour.

Published: 26 February 2015 10:48 CET
First Swedish woman wins Michelin star
Titti Qvarnström, the first female head chef at a Michelin-starred Swedish restaurant. Photo: Bloom in the Park
Bloom in the Park, a European-style restaurant which overlooks Pildammsparken, a beautiful public park in Malmö, does not have a menu. Instead, it promises that "the best is served according to availability, day and mood".
 
The Local spoke to its head chef Titti Qvarnström, 35, just an hour after she learned that her restaurant had scooped a Michelin star as the first Michelin Nordic Cities guide was presented in Stockholm.
 
"I found out when everyone else did," she said.
 
"We knew that judges had been in the area and of course I thought we deserved one for what we do. So it's great! It's an amazing feeling and I am especially pleased that it puts my home city Malmö on the culinary map."
 
It is the first time that the famed guide has included cities from outside of the Nordic capitals. 
 
Malmö lies just over the famous Öresund bridge to Copenhagen, which has a dozen Michelin-starred restaurants and enjoys boasting that it is the culinary hub of Scandinavia.
 
"I guess people won't have to cross the bridge now," smiled Qvarnström who trained in Denmark before working in kitchens around Europe. Bloom in the Park is her first restaurant in Sweden.
 
The city's tourism office said it was proud of the city's growing reputation as a destination for food and beverage fans.
 
"Malmö has in recent years become the home of more and more exciting food initiatives and restaurants, often unexpected and a bit quirky," it wrote in a press statement on Thursday.
 
"With three star restaurants in the Michelin Guide, we've put Malmö on the fine-dining map," Johan Hermansson, director of tourism for the city said in the same news release.
 
Despite Sweden having a global reputation for gender equality, the win in Malmö represents the first time that a kitchen run by a female chef has been given a star.
 
"It really is a mystery to me why there are so few women in this profession," she said.
 
"It's an easy excuse to say it's because women have children or want to have children, because we have this fantastic system in this country where the state helps both mothers and fathers even if they are working irregular hours. There are plenty of leading women chefs in other countries that don't have the same facilities as us," she added.
 
"I hope that I can be an inspiration to more women choosing to go down this road."
 
Elsewhere in Sweden, three restaurants in Stockholm were each awarded two stars: Frantzén, Mathias Dahlgren-Matbaren and Oaxen Krog, which was given the honour for the first time. Six other eateries in the capital were given one star.
 
Gothenburg now boasts six Michelen-starred restaurants with Koka and Mat & Människor joining the ranks for the first time.
 
The other two restaurants in Malmö to score with the judges for the first time were Ambiance à Vindåkra and Vollmers.
 
Over in Denmark, the city of Aarhus was celebrating, with three restaurants there given their debut Michelin stars.

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

SHOW COMMENTS