Nicolai Tram

The Climb

Classic French training gave Tram the disciplinary base that still shapes the work. From there, he moved into a less common assignment: working with Paco Roncero documenting the El Bulli back catalog at Paco Roncero in Spain. That experience placed him inside a culinary language organized around memory, technique, and the preservation of ideas. He later ran a restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, a role that shifted the focus from technique alone to the demands of service, menu building, and kitchen authority. He also appeared as a celebrity chef on a national morning show in Denmark, moving the work out of the pass and into a broader public frame. The path points to a chef able to handle both pressure in the kitchen and the larger visibility that can come with contemporary dining. Taken together, those roles suggest a practice rooted in one landscape, with formal ambition running alongside a more direct, woodsmoke-edged everyday rhythm.

Today

Tram continues as head chef and co-owner of Knystaforsen in Rydöbruk. The kitchen’s logic is plain: food, fire, and nature are treated as related parts of the same work, not separate themes. His own language around the place makes that clear, balancing seriousness with a kind of deliberate looseness. Tram once said, “We are Boy Scouts who are full of themselves.” It fits a kitchen that leans on outdoor instinct, elemental technique, and tight control. The line has humor, but it also names a useful condition in the trade: confidence matters, but it has to stay in contact with the raw material.

In Their Words “The philosophy behind this is that food on an open fire is an original, simple format to enable human beings to make a connection between nature and food.” “We are Boy Scouts who are full of themselves.”

Recognition

Nicolai's honors include Michelin Star.