Ferma

Since 2022 at the pass

At the pass, Nils Ģēvele keeps pace and order as Michelin-starred chef at Ferma in Quiet Centre, Riga, where service asks for control before flourish. Since 2022, his work as Head Chef has placed him at the center of a kitchen built around Latvian produce, local farms, seafood, and a modern reading of heritage ingredients. The discipline is visible in the way the menu keeps close to its materials: beef from Latvian farms, river fish, Baltic salmon, herring, wild venison, Latvian-grown shrimp, berries, roots, and forest flavors brought forward without heavy disguise.

Ģēvele also coaches Bocuse d'Or Team Latvia, and that competition register sits near the restaurant one. Repetition, timing, and exact execution matter in both rooms. Latvia's Chef of the Year in 2022 and 2023 belongs to that same pattern of sustained service rather than a single plate. At Ferma, the leadership reads less as theatre than structure: a clean line through the pass, a kitchen that has to keep its standards intact, and a menu whose confidence comes from restraint.

Local produce held to the method

The cooking at Ferma follows a concise à la carte shape, with small plates and larger courses that return often to beef, duck, tartare, river fish, and seafood. Grilled Beef Fillet, Duck Fillet, and Beef Tartare sit among the signatures, not as monuments but as tests of sourcing, heat, seasoning, and rest. The restaurant's name means farm in Latvian, and the kitchen treats that as a working instruction: vegetables from beds, meat from local farms, fish from rivers and the Baltic, and ingredients gathered from forests.

The method favors clarity. Beef may be dry-aged; fish may arrive as zander, trout, catfish, herring, or salmon; the terrace smokehouse brings live fire into the summer program. Ģēvele's sustainability work is practical rather than ornamental, with waste sorting, careful workflow, ingredient repurposing, and plates given a second life. The wine program is curated to sit beside that food, guided by sommeliers rather than by spectacle. The point is not abundance for its own sake. It is alignment between the farm, the cellar, the bench, and the pass.

The room beside Viesturdārzs Park

The room has the calm of its address, across from Viesturdārzs Park in Riga's Quiet Centre, with the city softened by trees before it reaches the table. Inside, the barn-like interior keeps warmth close: wood, a fireplace, and a style that lets the kitchen's work hold the attention. The noise stays conversational, which suits a restaurant where the gestures are best read at table level, in the cut of beef, the smoke on fish, the clean edge of tartare.

In warm months, the terrace gives the cooking a second station. Smoke from the live fire meets the park air; seafood and grilled meat carry a different register outside than they do beside the fireplace. Ferma can feel elegant without becoming rigid, and cozy without giving up discipline. The room supports the work Ģēvele leads at the pass, steady enough for Beef Tartare to remain the concrete measure of Ferma.