For a restaurant that quite literally translates as “home”, Hjem in the north of England has spent the past year preparing to move. The Michelin-starred project, founded by Swedish chef Alex Nietosvuori and his wife Ally Thompson-Nietosvuori, opened in 2019 and was awarded its first Michelin star in January 2021.

The couple’s own description of Hjem has always been clear-eyed and pragmatic. It is rooted in Northumberland produce, North Sea seafood and game from the Tyne Valley, seen through a Scandinavian lens. That same clarity now frames the restaurant’s current chapter. Hjem closed at its original home in the village of Wall on 31 December 2025, then reopened as a six-month residency at South Causey Inn in County Durham from 4 February 2026. In the background, preparations continue for the team’s next permanent project, Freyja.

For Nietosvuori, the story of this move is less about reinvention than continuity, specifically the continuity of people. “When planning for the opening of Freyja, my number one priority was to keep all the staff together,” he says.

That emphasis lands differently once you understand how long the restaurant's core has been in place. “My head chef has worked with me for nine years, and my chefs for five,” Nietosvuori says. This kind of tenure is rare in an industry often defined by churn. It also explains why waiting it out between projects was never really an option. A restaurant can pause; a team can’t.

The residency itself makes the offer legible for a wider local audience. There is an à la carte menu alongside a six-course tasting option, plus a dedicated Sunday format. The service pattern keeps the rhythm of a destination restaurant without requiring a long lead time. Nietosvuori describes the shift in similarly practical terms. “The food is also slightly different: a bit more accessible, and the portions are larger,” he says. “It’s still my style of cooking, the same produce, the same message, just in a new location, aimed more at the general public.”

How Hjem landed at South Causey, he insists, was a chain of decisions driven by that staffing logic. “A few projects didn’t work out. Then Terry Laybourne, a friend of mine, who is also a chef, said, ‘Why don’t you speak to Susan at South Causey Inn?’ I did, and then it all moved very quickly from there.”

The other thread running beneath the logistics is authorship. Nietosvuori is unusually direct about why Hjem’s original chapter ended when it did. “I never actually owned the building that Hjem was housed in,” he says. “After a while you develop your own perspective, and it just felt right to move on in life and create something new.”

Freyja—announced as a restaurant-with-rooms at Close House Estate near Wylam—currently has an Autumn 2026 opening window. If Hjem has put Nietosvuori’s name on the global fine-dining map, Freyja is Nietosvuori’s attempt to build something that can mature over years. “It’s a long-term project, that should take time, building it from the ground up and creating a solid foundation,” he says. “The ultimate goal is three stars, though you never know if you’ll get them, of course.”

In that context, his insistence on keeping the team together seems strategically smart. “I send my chefs away on a placement, one is at Frantzén in Stockholm at the moment,” he says. “With Freyja, I want to give all the chefs the chance to see how the very best kitchens in the world work.”

Nietosvuori’s own career has been shaped by the Nordic fine-dining circuit. “I worked for [Swedish chef] Daniel Berlin for a long time, and I’m obviously biased, but to me he’s probably the best chef on the planet,” he says. “I don’t really think about it as ‘Nordic’ as such, though. It’s simply food and service at an absolute peak level. What they do is world-class, the same you’d expect in Paris, New York, even London.”

That refusal to be boxed in extends to the menu itself. “In the beginning, a lot of people came in expecting certain things because I’m from the Nordics,” Nietosvuori says. “But over the years we’ve changed our style and done our own thing.” He’s frank about how easy it would be to trade on a recognizable Scandinavian identity—and why he doesn’t want to. “I want to find my own style. I’ve been lucky enough to travel, meet loads of fascinating people, and it’s exciting to bring that together into a menu that people, hopefully, genuinely enjoy.”

Ally Thompson-Nietosvuori has been open about “home” always being both literal and culinary, an idea you can relocate, if the people and principles remain intact. It is a logic that permeates this interim chapter. Keep the team together, keep the standards visible, keep moving. Freyja is framed as an expansion of authorship as much as ambition. Nietosvuori talks about it as “more truly mine”, a place where he can show “a completely different side of my cooking”. Until the doors open at Close House, the residency at South Causey Inn functions as the bridge. Not a pause, but a way of arriving with momentum.