NORTH Food Festival Returns To New York With New Events

Following last year's success, the Nordic Food Festival NORTH is returning to New York for the week of September 12 to 20, bringing exclusive Nordic dinners and cooking classes to the city. Arranged by the online culinary magazine Honest Cooking, the festival will be even bigger than before, with over 25 participating chefs and new events, including a nightly changing pop-up restaurant and a Nordic Street Food Festival. The prestigious list of chefs who will be showcasing the best of Nordic cuisine include Frida Ronge of vRÅ in Gothenburg, Sweden and Sasu Laukkonen of Chef & Sommelier in Helsinki, Finland, as well as New York based Fredrik Berselius of Aska and Mads Refslund of ACME.

Like last year, participants of the festival will be able to choose from a wide selection of cooking classes and dinners, for which tickets are sold separately. Held at the International Culinary Center, cooking classes include anything from "Nordic Grandma Cooking" with chef Sasu Laukkonen, learning Maria Östberg of FIKA's secrets to making perfect Swedish cinnamon buns, to more unusual themes, like learning how use your own foraged vegetables and herbs in chef Sami Tällberg's "Wild Finnish Cuisine" class.

Nordic dinners — from sustainable Norwegian seafood to Swedish chocolate and coffee pairings — will all be held at the brand new North pop-up shop, located in The Old Bowery Station in lower Manhattan, while the other new component for 2014, the Nordic Street Food Festival, is hosted at the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Free and open to public (with the option to buy food and drink tokens), the Street Food Festival will take place September 14 and 15, giving New Yorkers a chance to mingle and pair small bites of Nordic cuisine with Brooklyn Brewery beer. The second day of the festivities is dedicated to a unique all-Nordic hot dog competition, in which chefs will battle it out for the title of best Nordic hot dog — a concept that may seem incongruous, but hot dogs are more Nordic than one may think.

"All Nordic countries have their own unique versions of hot dogs, and the past few years we have seen the gourmet hot dog trend blow up in the region," Kalle Bergman, editor-in-chief at Honest Cooking,  said in a press release. "Now we want to crown the best — prepared by superstar Nordic chefs — and since New York is the quintessential hot dog city, we think it is only right that we host the first ever Nordic Hot Dog Championships right here on neutral grounds."

For more information and tickets to the events, visit the NORTH Food Festival webpage.