At Williamsburg's Frej, chefs Fredrik Berselius and Richard Kuo serve up $45 five-course meals composed of locally foraged and farmed foods in New Nordic style.
Ever since Rene Redzepi’s Copenhagen restaurant Noma was anointed ‘Best Restaurant in the World,’ New York diners have been frothing at the mouth for a taste of the New Nordic. And so, an inexorable buzz has been building for Frej, the Williamsburg restaurant that bends the New Nordic aesthetic through the prism of locally-foraged and farmed foods.
At Frej, open only on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, chefs Fredrik Berselius and Richard Kuo’s cooking, with its emphasis on wild ingredients and its kinda crazy price point (a mere $45 for the five course tasting menu), is quickly developing a cult following. The restaurant is currently fully booked well into June.
New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells previewed the restaurant this week, and gave it his stamp of approval:
“I suspect that Richard Kuo and Fredrik Berselius, the two young chefs behind this Brigadoon of a restaurant, aren’t in it for the money…Frej can’t be faulted on its timing: New Yorkers are so eager for a taste of the new Nordic cuisine at places like Noma that they would probably line up for Swedish fish…But the best reason for waiting two months or more to eat at Frej is not located in Denmark. It is found inside this makeshift kitchen in Williamsburg where, at the beginning of each week, an entire meal of uncommon ingredients sensitively assembled can be had for less than the price of some Manhattan entrees.”
Here’s the May menu at Frej:
Maine shrimp
cucumber, kohlrabi, oyster
Scallop
cabbage, ramp, seaweed
Pike
potato, sprat, wild herbs
Beef cooked in hay
parsnip, onion, garlic mustard
Camomille parfait
carrot, sea buckthorn, wood sorrel
Reserve a spot quick – by the time you finish reading this they may be booked into August.
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