Everyone has to eat, and enjoys food to some degree.
While I am definitely no food expert, I can say that I LOVE to eat. Having not
known anything about Norwegian culture prior to heading there, I had no idea
what was considered Norwegian cuisine. In my two-and-a-half weeks there, I got
to eat some of the most interesting and delicious food I’ve ever had in my
life. I will be offering some of my personal opinions on the food I ate, and
sharing about some of the things I learned about Norwegian culture. In no way
is anything I’m saying representative of everyone/all of Norway. Oh, and
warning: the pictures in this post will definitely make you drool. Do not
continue reading if you are hungry. If you wanted an in depth review on one of the amazing restaurants I got to eat at in Oslo, my dear friend Anders Husa wrote a post on it on his blog, http://andershusa.com/vaaghals-restaurant-oslo. (@andershusa), more about how I met him in a later post! The next three pictures are from the restaurant, see the full set on his blog!
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| Chicken liver mousse with juniper berry gel and oatmeal chips from the Vaaghals Restaurant in Oslo. One of our five starters, and it was just...wow... |
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| Apple glazed ox short ribs with burnt onions, caramelized onion puree, baked redbeets, and Norwegian new potatoes with grain mustard. This was our main and it was so good I passed out for a brief moment. |
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| Norwegian strawberries with almond and rye crumble and a sorbet of fresh cheese. The best dessert out of the three desserts. I could have eaten ten more bowls of these... |
One of the many cool things that I learned about
Norwegian culture was their high standard of living. Therefore, their food was something
to be valued. Norwegians did not eat things out of season; so while we can buy
any fruit/vegetable any time of the year in North America, they could not. But as a result of that, every in-season ingredient is high quality and
fresh. One thing I didn’t expect at all was that Norway has the best
strawberries in the world. Due to the temperature, length of seasons, and
climate, Norway has the most optimal conditions for growing strawberries. I had
the opportunity to try some myself and holy moly I had no idea strawberries
that sweet even existed. I got to engage with food in a whole new way in Norway,
as I saw exactly where my food came from before it arrived at my table. During
our time in Bergen, a chef named Thibault took us to his diver, who brought us
on his boat to forage for seafood. I got to pull up huge nets full of crabs,
fish, sea urchins, scallops, and clams. Then Thibault opened the sea urchin and
scallop ON THE BOAT and served it to us, just like that. LIKE WHATTTTT?! Every
chef that I encountered loved food, and their relationship with the food was
incredible. Things like never wasting their food, creating new dishes based on
whatever ingredients were freshest, and using local ingredients as often as
possible because they firmly believed in the quality of Norwegian grown
ingredients, were some of the practices that were extremely admirable to
observe.
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| This was just "some leftovers" given to us by the diver we went to forage fresh seafood with. A variation of Focaccia and king crab legs. |
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| A vegetarian feast from the Skjerdal Spring Farm in Flam. This is where we got to see the creation of Norway's traditional cheese, Brown Cheese. The vegetables here were incredibly fresh and it's meals like this that makes me feel like I can be a vegan. |
I got to try several foods in Norway that I have
never had in my life: reindeer, brown cheese, and whale. I had reindeer as
jerky, and it comes from the indigenous people of Northern Norway, the Sami
people. They are the only people allowed to herd reindeer in certain regions of
the Nordic countries. Reindeer jerky was similar to beef jerky except the
flavour was richer – and I love rich flavours, so naturally I loved it. Brown
cheese is the remnants of regular white cheese, boiled until the milk sugars
become caramelized. So even though it’s cheese, it has a similar texture to
caramel and can actually be used as a spread for things like waffles and toast.
Whale is something that you might have heard about in Norway, but it is not a
common food there. Whale cannot be found in every restaurant and most Norwegians
don’t even like whale. There are very specific regulations regarding whale-hunting
so that the practice is done ethically and properly. I tried it in a burger
because I was really curious about its taste and also because I just want to
try foods of all different cultures. I don’t know if it was just me but the
taste was kind of similar to chicken liver. I like chicken liver but the taste
was pretty distinct and unlike a lot of foreign meats that just “taste like
chicken.” This one definitely did not
taste like chicken haha.
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| Fresh Greenland Shrimp that we had on the beach after a light kayak ride. This one had roe in it! I have never eaten shrimp without extra seasoning/flavouring/sauce but this shrimp was so fresh and had a natural sweetness to it that it didn't need anything extra! |
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| The delicious fish soup from the famous fish market in Stavanger, the food capital of Norway. @fisketorgetstavanger |
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| King crab legs infused with Thai flavours from the Fish Market in Stavanger once again. This market receives its seafood fresh daily, and they create their menus based on the fresh seafood that they get. It is half fish market, half restaurant so you can be sure that the seafood here is ALWAYS fresh and delicious. |
The last thing I want to say about the food is
Norway’s main common specialty: the seafood. I found out that Japan (where we
all believe has the best fish ever (because of sushi)), actually gets their
fish from Norway! MIND BLOWN! I admit I have pretty low standards when it comes
to food, so I will tend to think a lot of foods taste good and I am not the
best judge of taste/quality. Most of the time I admittedly cannot tell between
a $10 version of a food and a $50version
of the same food (well sometimes there is no difference, and it’s just the branding/ambiance
of the restaurant), but the seafood in Norway was seriously on a different
taste level – level “DANGGGGGGG D-D-D-DELICIOUS” (obviously I am the grand
master of creating fictional levels for arbitrary things). Norway is surrounded
by water, and the fjords enter the country so even cities in the centre of the
country will have a lot of water surrounding the city. So naturally, all the
seafood is extremely fresh. Even though I’ve been to Chinese restaurants that
let you select the fish you want to eat from the tank, it is not even close to
fish fresh from the sea. Every single seafood dish I had in Norway made my day.
So my day was being made a lot… order literally any seafood in Norway and I
guarantee that you will not regret it (unless you ordered something really
expensive, and found the same thing in the restaurant next door for cheaper.
Then it’s your fault. Sorry)!
You might have not heard too much about the food in
Norway, but perhaps you’ve heard about how beautiful the landscapes and sights in Norway are. My next post will touch on
some of those sights that I saw, because holy cow Norway took my breath away.
But more on that next post!
