In a development that will shock absolutely no one who has ever eaten a tomato that tasted like a tomato, Sweden's Gästrikland and Hälsingland regions are proving that food sourced from the place you're actually standing in might be... good? Revolutionary stuff.
The epicentre of this radical notion is Högbo Brukshotell, a hotel and former ironworks two hours north of Stockholm, where Stefan Johansson - former head chef, current sustainability person - has spent a decade asking himself the kind of question that ruins a perfectly comfortable career: why am I cooking this food?
A journalist posed that question years ago, and Johansson, who trained in Stockholm's top restaurants where ingredients from around the world were only a phone call away, couldn't shake it. "Before, I wanted food to be spectacular; I didn't really care where it came from," he admits. "Then I closed the window of where we source from down to the region. It was the best thing I've ever done."
So instead of importing inspiration, Högbo launched the Made in Högbo project, starting with lamb and bringing animal rearing and butchery in-house, then adding vegetable production. Greenhouses now sit alongside kitchen gardens, supplying the restaurant while creating work for people who might otherwise struggle to find it. Refugees from Myanmar helped establish early growing projects, and new arrivals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo now split their time between Swedish language classes and work placements - their influence visible in rows of papaya, bananas, and other plants that have no business being in Sweden but seem to be thriving anyway. There are plans for an aquaponics system combining greenhouse cultivation with tilapia fish farming, plus a bakery making sourdough and cakes, a microbrewery run by one of the chefs, a dairy making fresh cheeses, and an excellent deli.
But Högbo isn't alone in this fever dream of knowing where your food comes from. Across several days travelling through Gästrikland and neighbouring Hälsingland in eastern Sweden, a network emerges of millers, fishers, distillers, cheese makers and chefs connected by the shared idea that food should reflect the place it comes from - a concept so obvious it's almost embarrassing it needed rediscovering.
At Gammelstilla, an old ironworks has become a small whisky distillery. In Gästrike-Hammarby, The Old Mill is now an award-winning restaurant run by Bogdan Ioan Gheorghe and Ellinor Andersson, with a tasting menu featuring local producers and surprising ingredients like the invasive species Japanese knotweed - because nothing says "terroir" like eating the problem.
At Bergmans Fisk in Norrsundet, where low islands scatter across the bay and the Baltic stretches east towards Finland beyond wooden smokehouses, a seventh-generation fishing family has been connected to these waters for over a century. Inside the smokehouses, salmon hangs in neat rows, a slow process refined over generations. But Dennis Bergman explains that for traditions - and the business - to survive, they have to evolve and diversify. In 2020, the family opened a waterfront restaurant overlooking the bay where much of their fish is caught, serving a smorgasbord of smoked salmon and böckling (hot smoked herring) piled on dark rye crispbreads. They also run a travelling fish van serving coastal communities and are planning a small hotel - new ventures that will help secure the future of old skills.
Driving north through deep pine forests and lush fields, hand-painted signs for potatoes, eggs and strawberries keep appearing, with honesty boxes sitting beside stacks of produce outside red-painted farm buildings. At Teve Kvarn, a mill south of Järvsö, Anna Larsson - a seventh-generation miller - sources grain from roughly a 150km (93-mile) radius, selling seed to farmers and then buying back the grain to ensure high-quality flour production. Only a handful of mills of this type remain in Sweden. Anna points out her newest machine - it was installed in 1930.
Beside the traditional wooden mill, shiny stills are visible in a tall glass building. This is the Tevsjö distillery run by Anna's husband, Jonas, producing vodka, gin and aquavit using grain from the mill. The distillery runs on hydroelectric power generated from the nearby stream, and has already increased its production capacity more than 10 times on the strength of the products' popularity - while creating 10 new local jobs.
At nearby Järvsö Lanthandel, chef Tobias Annerhult runs the general store and restaurant with a food philosophy that borders on the monastic. "I only buy salt, pepper, sugar and oil," he says. "I don't use stabilisers. Nothing gets thrown away; that feeds the creative process. Our philosophy is to grow through limitations." In a climate where vegetables arrive in abundance for only part of the year, preserving is essential. Annerhult pickles, cures and ferments local produce, including meat for charcuterie.
Tonight, dinner requires actual labour: a cooking class Tobias offers for private group bookings. We've brought produce collected across the region - flour from the centuries-old mill, cheese and potatoes from honesty boxes, fish from a family that has worked the same waters for generations, and vegetables from local greenhouses. Together, we make fermented pea pancakes with sweet preserved apple and salty local goat's cheese; bouncy fresh pasta using Anna's wheat and eggs from Tobias's chickens, served simply with burrata-style cheese, brown butter and garden herbs; and warm cake with the first of the season's rhubarb.
It's a meal that tastes all the better for knowing the stories and people behind it. Combining preserved and fermented ingredients with the season's freshest produce harks back to traditional approaches to cooking and eating - and today's chefs are reclaiming that philosophy with delicious results. It perhaps helps answer the question that changed Stefan's career all those years ago: why cook this food, in this place? Because when food truly belongs somewhere, it becomes a way of understanding that place too.
The trip was provided by Visit Sweden. For more information visit gastrikland.se and destinationhalsingland.se. Högbo Brukshotell has doubles from 1,995 Swedish kronor (£155) B&B.