Sami Tallberg is a trailblazer with enigmatic approach to gastronomy – and life. His talent for cooking, together with his luminous personality and avowed human-nature connection, makes Sami a unique chef.
Tallberg's legendary Midas touch is based on his combined creative force and elegance earned through his vivacious cheffing years in the heart of London’s groovy restaurant scene. Global food and wine travels, food writing, life-altering work in Bordeaux vineyard and winery and revamping several Finland’s quirkiest restaurants to serve wild food have informed his exceptionally diverse B2B experience.
Sami’s menus include 120+ edible wild plants and 80+ wild mushrooms always according to geographical location, and seasonality/micro-seasonality. By nourishing wild edibles as part of our diet, we connect with our surrounding nature on a deep, radical level – and nurture our gut with utmost respect – with versatile probiotics, prebiotics, fibres, nutrients, enzymes and phytochemicals that will expand the environment for an active and lively microbiome.
These magical ingredients Sami forages himself, with a trusted crew of wisdom keepers, expertly administering them to their energy flow. Seafood, fowl and game are part of the menu, ethically or wild-caught and purchased from responsible fishers and hunters, providing top-tier nutritional value.
SAMI'S MESSAGE
Through his activism, Sami continues to spread the wild message aligned with Elias Lönnrot, Ilma Lindgren and Toivo Rautavaara – honouring their legacy, in his uniquely futuristic and spirit-lifting ways. Finland's restaurant scene's enfant terrible was immortalised when being awarded by Finland Prize of Culture – the only chef to achieve this in Finland – honouring his prolific achievements and unique, cutting-edge use of wild-sourced, seasonal ingredients.
Tallberg is perpetuating the celebration and regular use of wild edible plants and mushrooms as part of everyday life as well as part of gastronomy.
Sami Tallberg's food concept emphasises the interconnectedness of life, suggesting that no organism exists in isolation – it is always part of a complex network of symbiotic relationships.
IKIGAI
Sami’s work naturally embodies the Japanese concept of purpose, ‘Ikigai’. This is where passion, profession, mission and vocation intersect. As a messenger of infinite wisdom from nature, Sami shares his knowledge of wild food and sustainable culinary practices.
Sami doesn’t only cook food – he channels it. By enjoying his menus, his oeuvres – you will taste and experience what he is ultimately gifting us with, based on his ikigai.
A BIG BANG
Despite his Finnish origins, Sami's devotion to studying edible, medicinal wild plants and mushrooms surrealistically began while running a restaurant in Shoreditch – after an immediately sold-out wild food supper serving grilled spearfished brill with steamed sea kale, wild mushrooms, samphire and sauce hollandaise. This single service turned out to be his professional ‘big bang’ – guiding Sami the very next morning to the source of magic; foraging seakale, rock samphire, wild blossoming fennel, oysters and St. Georges shrooms from the coastal area of Kent, UK. This transformative trip shifted everything – both professionally and personally – leading to Sami's original cooking philosophy forming and finding its fundamental structure during his following years in London.
Repatriation to Finland with a mission to dive deeper into foraging made Sami understand that the characteristics of Nordic food are solely based on the seasonal wild ingredients, including their peak and micro-seasons. The journey since has continued through practically every region of Finland, including the archipelago and specific areas of Lapland, discovering a wide range of edible plants within the greater Helsinki area (plus a hefty range of edible wild mushrooms around his Ateljé, in Ruissalo).
COOKBOOKS
Thanks to Konstsamfundet, Forager's Cookbook FLORA and Forager's Cookbook FUNGI are both now published in English and Swedish alongside Finnish, and are available for purchase. These serve as manuals to his life's work, designed for everyone to understand the ethos, beauty and versatility of modern foraging.
GLOBAL CRUSADES
High demand has led Sami to execute foraging spectacles in New York, Boston, Barcelona, Berlin, Bern, Split, Amsterdam, Stockholm and St. Petersburg, as well as the untouched wilderness of Cape Town.
In addition to 28 years of work in international restaurants and over 20 years of foraging, Sami has presented fabled wild food events around the globe; in Thailand, Mexico, Columbia, Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Emirates, Kazakstan, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Russia, and Estonia.
WILD FOOD FOR CONTEMPORARY LIVING
These travels together with Sami's crystal clear holistic vision - applicable to both urban and rural environments – have elevated Sami’s awareness and understanding of foraging, its principles and sacred qualities.
For the last decade, Sami has devoted himself to working closely with HOLOLIFE Center, plus the Antioxidant Clinic & Biomed for several years. By adopting health-promoting qualities alongside multilayered and sturdy gastronomical structures, he has developed his hallmarked, fine art-rated and vitality-boosting cuisine – well-suited to and designed for contemporary living.
MORE ABOUT SAMI TALLBERG IN WIKIPEDIA
PHOTOS: Polina Korolev, Tommi Anttonen