Cooking with Arket chef Martin Berg

Martin Berg joined Arket in October 2016, following roles with venerable Swedish chef Mathias Dahlgren and after founding his own business, the sustainability-focussed Green Rabbit Bakery in Stockholm. “I have always been interested in breaking new grounds, also for myself,” says Berg of his latest role, which breaks with culinary tradition.

“In the end, it’s about inspiring teams,” he counters. “Of course, it's been super nice to do that with fine dining but it's equally inspiring for me when I see the café crew succeed with what they are doing.”

As Arket's in-house chef, Berg acts as a creative director of the lifestyle brand's cafés. “My brief was: 'OK, you get 50 square metres in a city; make it really nice and taste good!,” says Berg, remembering his first days working with Arket. “It's quite compressed, but you are able to make quite a lot.”

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For Arket, Berg mapped-out easy to prepare recipes based on the New Nordic food movement, which promotes seasonal and local produce prepared following the long-standing cooking traditions of the North. Visit an Arket store today and you may, depending on season, find slices of dark rye bread topped with jewel-coloured chunks of beetroot and bright green lettuce, fragrant cinnamon buns and cups of clear-yellow Linden blossom tea. To Berg, the cafés turn shopping for clothing, accessories and homeware at Arket into a multisensory experience. “Automatically, when you add food, you stimulate a couple more senses: smell and, when you eat something, flavour."

This winter, Arket debuts its first cookbook, authored by Berg and made in Denmark. The handy compendium collates 24 vegetarian recipes for starters, mains, deserts and drinks (carrot smoothies and ice teas) all segmented into Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter sections. “The book follows the seasons, like we do in the store with the clothing,” Berg explains. “I worked a lot with [the] homeware [team]. That is one of the reasons that it is divided into seasons.”

There are recipes for ginger snaps (Winter), white asparagus spears served baked with fresh herbs for Spring, and autumnal celeriac; for long summer days, Berg recommends colourful fruit salads matching peaches, apples and red berries with a sprig of green tarragon. Berg's crispy kale salad, for which steamed and pan-fried leafs of the deep-green cabbage are dressed with a white miso sauce, has been a crowd-pleaser.

While in charge of Arket's culinary output, Berg's own wardrobe has in turn been influenced by his new role, as chef whites have been replaced with Arket shirting. “The blue Oxford shirt if my chef's coat nowadays", he says, only half in jest.