Andreas Viestad

Andreas Viestad is a Norwegian food columnist and TV chef. He has hosted nine seasons of New Scandinavian Cooking broadcast in the U.S., China, Germany, Italy, Finland and on BBC Lifestyle in over fifty countries since 2003, and is a food writer for Dagbladet and Morgenbladet newspapers in Norway. He has had a monthly column in The Washington Post titled “The Gastronomer”. Viestad has been called “Norway’s most exciting food writer”, and “Norway’s culinary ambassador”. Andreas trained to be a food writer at the University of Oslo, where he studied History, Political Science and Media Studies, and throughout his cooking career he has kept his keen interest in these studies, using food as a means to investigate culture and history. He has published a number of books in his native Norwegian, as well as two Englisg language books, Kitchen of Light – New Scandinavian Cooking (Artisan Books) and Where Flavor Was Born - Recipes and Culinary Travels Along the Indian Ocean Spice Route (Chronicle Books). He has a small farm in the hamlet of Viestad in the southern Norwegian town of Farsund, as well as an agricultural project in Elgin, near Cape Town, South Africa, named ‘Garden of Elgin’. The project is run in collaboration with Dr. Paul Clüver on the Clüver family estate, and features 50 different citruses, more than 40 varieties of peaches, nectarines and apricots and a wide selection of herbs and vegetables, including more than 100 varieties of tomatoes.[11] He also has a home in his birth town: Oslo. In 2010, Viestad started working on a new food and agriculture project, a center for food culture for children at Geitmyra Gård, a protected farm in the middle of Oslo, inspired by Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard. He established a non-commercial foundation, and in September 2011 Geitmyra matkultursenter for barn opened. The center teaches children about cooking and growing food. In 2011 he opened his first restaurant, St Lars in Oslo. He lives on Geitmyra with his wife and three children.