This. I advocate this method of interviewing here in the states every chance I get. The most common form of push back I get is from hiring managers terrified of being hoodwinked into making a bad hire. It's like they don't trust their own judgement enough to be able to tell apart those who know what they're talking about from those who just talk a good game.
> I'm always surprised how many candidates cannot even point to one problem they worked on they found interesting or one solution that they're proud of
Junior engineers, I assume? I had problems with those questions when I first started out. It's hard to say with a straight face that the thing I was most proud of at that point in my career was creating a very simple templating system in PHP. Of course, the interviewers rolling their eyes and saying 'is that all?' didn't help.