He had previously worked at L'Astrance and L'Arpège in France, before moving onto Fäviken in 2008, which was ranked the 57th best restaurant in the world and won two Michelin stars in 2016.

Although a family story is told of Nilsson cooking his first meal at the age of three, his first culinary memory is of chopping cucumbers at his grandmother's farm.

He worked there for a couple of weeks before being fired as he was finding it hard to understand the other chefs as his French wasn't as good as he initially thought it was.

[1] He had become disillusioned with cooking after he returned to his homeland as he found it hard to source ingredients in Sweden that were as good as those in France, and he also felt that the dishes he was putting together were simply copies of those from Barbot.

[1] In 2010, Bruce Palling of The Wall Street Journal, included Nilsson in his list of the top ten young chefs in Europe.