The Nordic Food Cluster?

In an article in the Financial Times, San Francisco chef Daniel Patterson talks about a new era dawning in fine dining--that of local cuisine. He writes that "over the past several decades the menus of almost every expensive restaurant in the western world have become an endless parade of caviar, foie gras, truffles, lobster and fillet mignon...more important as cultural signifiers than as actual experiences." As an example of the new local cuisine movement, he mentions the restaurant Noma in Denmark. Chef Redzepi and his team at Noma search for local ingredients (that have not been commercially available until now) and use them to concoct a new "Nordic" cuisine. Examples of his enticing dishes are "Sauteed lobster and pickled hip rose", "Musk ox and milk skin", and "Ashes and leeks."

This restaurant, bestowed with two Michelin stars and rated the third best restaurant in the world, has inspired the Danish government to create a new project (New Nordic Food) to help locals develop local food products (for example, birch beer). If we take Micheal Porter's theory on clusters, it sounds like the Nordic area is building up their food cluster, with fine dining right smack in the middle of it. This is a really exciting development not just for food lovers, but also for business people.