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I just got back from spending a week and a half in the Faroe Islands.
Brief summary: fantastic time, steep hills, sun burn, blond people,
sheep, birds.
I'd promised myself that I'd try at least some of the local
specialities, which you simply can't get in the UK. So, just before we
left, we went to the restaurant of the Hotel Hafnia, in the centre of
the capital, Torshavn.
Hotel Hafnia,
Aarvegur 4-10
Torshavn
Faroe Islands
tel +298 31 32 33
email hafnia@xxxxxx.xx
Despite it being during the national holiday, there was no trouble
getting a table. We had reserved one, but it wasn't necessary.
The service throughout was attentive, but not overly so, which is a good
thing - having a waiter hovering over your shoulder throughout the meal
is irritating, and makes me want to gut them with a broken plate. There
was no problem with language, and the menu and wine list included English
translations. The decor is modern but not intrusive, the seats
comfortable, and the background music awful. Film theme music should
stay in the cinema.
The wine list was fairly basic, but we ended up with a nice robust red.
By London standards it was hideously expensive, but all alcohol is
expensive throughout the Faroes - expect to pay a fiver for a pint of
the best local beer in one of the few pubs. I'm not particularly
knowledgeable about wine, and it wasn't quite what I expected based upon
the description on the wine list. Bad translation, or just me not
understanding it right - who knows. And who cares, it went well with
the meal.
The "Faroese menu" - nothing but national specialities - gave us little
choice. There was one starter, one main course, and one dessert. The
starter was a selection of morsels from some of the other dishes the
islands are famous for. Along with some token green stuff (and I don't
know why they bothered with it), there was some dried fish, some
slivers of smoked lamb, slices from a pilot whale sausage, and some
whale blubber in jelly. Yes, fat in fat. My arteries scream at the
very thought! The dried fish was nothing special. Smoked lamb was
certainly interesting, and something I wouldn't have thought would work,
but it did. The whale, and of course the blubber, was very rich,
and tastes somewhat like goat, but more salty and with a touch of
iodine. It was far too rich to have as a starter normally, but seeing
that the aim was to try as many of the local dishes as possible, it
worked well. The accompanying bread was good and solid. I like the
sort of bread you can build houses out of, like the Russians and Germans
do so well, and most of the bread over there, even in the stupormarkets,
got my approval.
For the main course - two braised puffins each (they're quite small
birds) with pretty much all the veggies that will grow in the islands!
That is, taters, broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, all of which were
done just right so they still had texture and flavour. The puffins were
smothered in a slightly spicy, and very creamy, gravy. Puffin tastes
nothing like what you'd expect from a bird. It's almost like liver, but
slightly porky. About the only way in which it's like any other bird
I've eaten is the texture, and even that was a little finer and denser
than I expected.
Finally, for dessert, we had what the menu called rhubarb soup (rhubarb
being the only other crop I saw growing) with the decidedly
non-traditional creme brulee. It wasn't soup (a bad translation I
guess), more a very sweet syrup, like what you use when you're canning
or jarring your own rhubarb, with slices of cooked rhubarb floating in
it, the whole lot then chilled. It was a weird combination, but by god
did they go well together. Of all three courses, it's the only one you
could make here, and I heartily recommend it.
Finally, the coffee was up to the Faroes usual high standards. In all
the time there, I didn't have a single bad coffee, even from vending
machines. Machine coffee, of course, wasn't good, but it was still
tolerable. If a bunch of Vikings stuck on rocks in the middle of the
Atlantic can get coffee right, why the hell can't Londoners? Grrr.
The whole meal was very enjoyable, if painful on the wallet (150 quid
for two people, including two bottles of wine, but this can not be
sensibly compared to London prices), and I certainly recommend it if any
of you are ever in the Faroes.
--
David Cantrell | Reprobate | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david
The Law of Daves: in any gathering of technical people, the
number of Daves will be greater than the number of women.
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