Food
Frida Johansson
food
– “I have the dream job
I never dreamt of”
SACC-PHILADELPHIA
18
Frida Johansson
“I always do things in 110 and I am a true workaholic. If I have decided to do something, I want to
do it thoroughly no matter how long it will take.”
As the private chef to the ambassador, Frida is responsible for catering all of the official events at the
ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. These
can be anything from breakfast to cocktails or dinners, and serve either two or 500 guests per event.
On average, Frida is making food for approximately
4000 – 5000 guests each year, which among others
have included Vice President Biden, King Carl XVI
Gustaf and Queen Silvia, and Prince Daniel. Frida’s
very first event as a 23-year old newly appointed
chef at the residence, was a barbeque with the
previous Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl
Bildt.
Even if Frida today is one of Sweden’s greatest
chefs, it was not a clear dream job for her when
she was younger. Cooking has always been important in her family and she speaks fondly of her
mother’s passion for making good food, while she
shows us her great grandmother’s cookbook that
has given her a lot of inspiration. Something she did
know though, was that she wanted to work with
her hands, and during her high school studies at Ester Mosesson’s Culinary School in Gothenburg, she
decided she wanted to become a chef.
At the young age of 28, Frida Johansson,
the private chef to the Ambassador of Sweden to the United States, Björn Lyrvall, has
already accomplished more than what
some people do during a lifetime. We met
her a cold day in February to talk about
food, what it is like working in the United
States, and how she ended up where she
is today.
After being greeted by the butler, we meet Frida
who has just come out from a meeting about the
upcoming week’s release of the Swedish Embassy’s
public diplomacy theme program for 2015, Earth &
Space. The program is promoting mutual Swedish –
American interests in the areas of politics, culture,
trade and research to a large and international
audience, and Frida is responsible for the catering
at the opening exhibition. While we are talking and
enjoying her delicious cinnamon buns (it’s afternoon and fika time, after all!), Frida is preparing a
sea buckthorn dessert for the evening’s dinner. We
barely have time to blink before the next side dish,
a parsnip mousse, has been mixed together. According to Frida, it is one of the reasons to why she
has succeeded so well in her career:
Frida is preparing parsnip mousse.
Her career started in high school when she received
a scholarship that gave her the opportunity to work
as a trainee in Antwerp, Belgium, for six months. She
enjoyed working in an international setting, and a
couple of months later, she moved to no less than
Italy, Austria and eventually New Zealand, where
she worked at multiple prestigious restaurants.