At Restaurant Flora at Thora Vingård on Bjäre, the focus is on the raw ingredients. Since opening two years ago, Bjärekyckling has never been missing from the menu. It’s no coincidence.

Chef Tobias Millqvist has collaborated with Bjärefågels founder P-O and Martin Ingemarsson for over 20 years. It’s not just about sourcing local ingredients. It’s about shared creativity, logistics, and a shared interest in taking the chicken further than standard practice allows.

Cooking that makes a difference

At Flora, a chicken breast is never cooked in a frying pan alone. The breast is always cooked on the bone first, before the bone is cut out from the chicken breast, which is then carefully fried until it gets a nice color. It’s an extra step that most people skip – but the difference in texture and flavor, according to Tobias, is impossible to ignore.

– It’s impossible to compare. Neither in consistency nor appearance,” he says. The temperature is carefully thought out. Flora never serves chicken cooked above 68 degrees, that is a few degrees below the 72 degrees recommended by the Swedish Food Agency as a guideline. Campylobacter, the bacteria one practically needs to protect against in Swedish chicken, dies at 65 degrees. The result is a chicken that is cooked through but still juicy, something Tobias would like more people to dare to cook at home as well.

”If you know that the chicken is sustainably produced, you can be confident”

Chicken oysters – a hidden delicacy

Flora experiments with something that rarely appears on Swedish menus: the chicken breast steak. It is a small cut detail on the underside of the bird, barely weighing five grams, with a unique texture and flavor. Bjärefågel and Tobias have had a dialogue about the request and are cutting and delivering it separately to Flora.

A vineyard with a restaurant – not the other way around

Flora is not a restaurant that happens to be located next to a winery. Thora Vingård is the heart of the business, and the restaurant exists to enhance the overall experience as a destination. This distinction is important to Tobias and his colleagues.

The menu is adapted to the season and what is available locally. During the winter months, when little grows, the kitchen works extensively with stored and canned ingredients. As spring and summer set in, the local pantry opens up again. Approximately 90 percent of the ingredients are Swedish, and the collaboration with local producers and Bondens Skafferi – which handles the logistics for small-scale producers in Scania – is a key part of the business.

The chicken from Bjärefågel fits into that context in an almost self-evident way. It is local, it is well-kept, and it works excellently with the wines produced at Thora Winery.

”The chicken is grateful to work with just the wines we produce,” says Tobias. ”And I like it as a main course in a menu. It’s not too heavy.”

Visit Restaurant Flora at Thora Winery and experience how a high-quality raw material and Swedish wines can together make for something truly memorable.