Björn Frantzén

Björn Frantzén is a Swedish chef and restaurateur whose flagship, Frantzén, in Stockholm became the first restaurant in Sweden ever to be awarded three Michelin stars, in the 2018 guide — and has held them every year since. He runs the Frantzén Group, one of the largest fine-dining restaurant groups in northern Europe, with restaurants in Stockholm, London, Singapore, Las Vegas, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Frantzén was born in Stockholm in 1977 and originally trained as a professional footballer, playing in the Swedish AIK youth system before a knee injury ended his career in his late teens. He retrained as a cook, completing his national service as a chef in the Royal Swedish Army's officer mess at Karlberg Castle, and stagéd through a series of major European kitchens including The Fat Duck under Heston Blumenthal, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London, Chez Nico, and the three-star Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons under Raymond Blanc.

In 2008 he opened Frantzén/Lindeberg in Stockholm's Old Town with pastry chef Daniel Lindeberg; the restaurant earned a Michelin star within a year, a second in 2010, and was ranked as high as #12 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list. In 2016 he closed it, parted ways with Lindeberg, and reopened in a three-storey townhouse on Klara Norra Kyrkogata as simply Frantzén — earning a third Michelin star at the end of 2017. The cooking is a deliberate hybrid of Nordic produce (langoustine from the west coast, reindeer, lingonberry, pine) and Japanese kaiseki technique, served as a single 20-course menu to roughly 25 covers a night across the three floors.