Fjord To Table—Michelin Stars And Fermented Fare In The Faroe Islands

A dining room at Raest

Klara Jacobsen

A tiny wooden shed beside a fjord in the Faroe Islands is home to one of the most remarkable dining experiences anywhere. There, on these windswept islands between Iceland and Norway, guests sit on benches, atop sheepskin throws, while a Mexican-born, Michelin-starred chef prepares seafood that’s been plucked from the North Atlantic only moments before.

The shed, whose roof is covered with thick grass that matches the slopes on the far side of the fjord, is called Skerpi. That’s short for the Faroese word skerpikjøt, which refers to the strongly flavored, final stage of fermented, wind-dried mutton. The proprietors—the same ones who brought the Faroes to the attention of the gastronomy world via their groundbreaking restaurant, KOKS—are a bit circumspect about the meat preservation when they talk about Skerpi.

There’s time for all that later. Here, now, within the shed—a real fermentation shed that once belonged to co-owner Johannes Jensen’s mother—the focus is the fresh creatures from the water. “The idea is to eat food right at the source,” says the Faroese restaurateur. “Not in some restaurant in London.”

Skerpi, which is marketed as a companion to the team’s most ambitious restaurant at the moment, Ræst, is definitely not in London. Although it’s on wheels to move around, it spends much of the season parked just outside the Faroe Islands’ capital of Tórshavn (population: 14,000). Although it’s warm and cozy inside, it’s intimately connected to the cold water outside.

Lunch is casual, half a dozen dishes: impossibly sweet scallops served with pickled pine shoots, ancient mahogany clams with chervil granita, creamy just-opened sea urchin that diners spread on warm sourdough, and grilled horse mussels with butter and the roots of sugar kelp seaweed, which have been pickled like cornichons.

The langoustine taco at Raest

Young Mee Rim

There’s a bit of complex creativity, but it’s easy to enjoy. Especially when the slanted light glints off the water outside the windows, and when Karin Visth, the much-lauded founding sommelier of KOKS and restaurant manager for the group’s ambitious new ventures, is pouring Champagne from an artisanal producer and a funky quince cider from France.

She’s pulled the bottles from a crate that’s been resting beside a small jetty near the shed. And she’s lifted more crates—covered in barnacles and seaweed—that contain the shellfish that divers collect for Ræst and the irreverent seafood bistro ROKS, next door. Neither restaurant keeps seafood in a walk-in. Instead, it’s alive in the Atlantic 20 minutes before service begins.

That possibility is part of what distinguishes these restaurants on the global dining stage. Skerpi shows “the most important part of the experience,” says Visth, which is saying a lot considering how many other first-of-its-kind superlatives can be draped over Jensen’s various ventures.

Raest seen from outside

Klara Jacobsen

Two Faroese chefs signed the original New Nordic manifesto, some 20 years ago, he says. Soon after, they saw Noma catapult to global fame serving Faroe Islands seafood. They decided to use it themselves to compete on their own. Even now, their use of their native seafood—and that lamb—is a big part of what makes Ræst so revelatory.

“Our food is inspired by scarcity,” says Jensen. “When you’re limited in resources, creativity increases.” Their restaurants are “also a bridge between old food traditions and new. It keeps the connection to the past. Maybe it’s because of isolation. There’s no supermarket tradition. People here know how to fillet a fish or butcher a sheep. Kids eat Faroese fermented food before they eat pizza.”

Head sommelier and restaurant manager Karin Visth

Courtesy of Raest

But before KOKS, that fermented food was a tough sell. It may have gotten the islanders through their long, dark winters—it was the only way they knew to preserve things—but it looked and smelled bad. “We were not proud of our food 20 years ago,” says Jensen. “We were embarrassed.” Hotels were serving tourists Danish food like pork and red cabbage.

“But when we started KOKS in 2011, we used our own ingredients and traditions,” he continues. What started as a hotel restaurant in Jensen’s (very lovely) Føroyar grew in increasingly weird directions until it had established itself in a rustic old farmhouse in the remote countryside, won two Michelin stars and attracted all kinds of fame.

Visth immigrated to become a founding partner, attracted by the idea of building something from scratch and doing things she never could have done in her native Switzerland, nor even Copenhagen. “I think it takes a portion of stupidity to do some of the things we have done with success,” she admits.

Raest head chef Sebastian Jiménez

Courtesy of Raest

But even great success doesn’t guarantee permanence, and after a stint in Greenland, KOKS came (at least for now) to an end. But in the heart of Tórshavn, two restaurants from the KOKS family, in two of the oldest houses in town, are carrying forward those groundbreaking ideas.

Led by chef Sebastian Jiménez, who worked in the kitchen at KOKS, Ræst has a strong dedication to fermentation. The name is derived from one of the many Faroese words related to the process. Visth compiled a glossary of terms related to freshness and fermentation, which guests receive at the end of the meal. It contains about 70 words, some of which appear in the fermented lamb section of the 15-course meal.

These three courses can be somewhat challenging, with unusual textures, flavors and aromas. The first is the skerpikjøt, a fermented lamb’s leg that’s been aged for six months and is presented as if it were a haunch of jamón Ibérico. It’s served as thin slices atop a beignet with smoked honey and lemon thyme; it’s a one-bite affair, and not all that unlike a bite of jamón.

A Faroe Islands landscape

Ann Abel

It’s followed by a sliver of lamb heart that’s bathed in a demiglace made of fermented lamb bones and preserved currant leaves from last year. Then comes the restaurant’s namesake dish, ræst lamb, which has been aged for three months and is pungent and gray, then slow cooked until it takes on the texture of pulled pork. Jiménez dials up the funk, adding fermented rhubarb, pickled green chili and fish dashi.

The beginning and end of the menu are easier. It starts with a parade of that seafood that was so very recently alive in the fjord. The products that get minimalist treatment in Skerpi go maximalist here. Those super-sweet scallops appear on tostadas with preserved scallop roe and seaweeds. Horse mussels are diced and tucked into a tartlet served with pickled vegetables and the last forget-me-nots of the year. And the first of the desserts is a highlight: A server spoons sea urchin tableside from its prickly shell and rests atop a sweet-tart mousse of sea buckthorn and monkey flower.

Jiménez’s Mexican roots take the stage—then share it with local, often foraged ingredients. Those tostadas with the scallops aren’t the traditional corn but Faroese rye. The pipian verde with the kombu-cured mackerel is made with gooseberries rather than tomatillos. The langoustine taco feels more Mexican; a server uses a stone molcajete—which the chef brought from his native Puebla—to prepare the pipian rojo with the crustaceans’ heads and legs, chipotle and cilantro oil. It’s tasty enough to spoon up on its own. (This collision of worlds is not the only one making waves these days.)

Plates from casual tasting menu at ROKS

Young Mee Rim

Across a narrow alleyway from Ræst is the group’s other standout project. ROKS bills itself as KOKS’s informal, seafood-focused little sister. It’s a lively bistro whose casual atmosphere, graffiti-style menu and whimsical illustrations of octopuses drinking wine belies serious technique from chef Carlos Alberto Andrade (also from Mexico) and his team. There’s a demure six-course option, but the way to go is the “Totally on the ROKS” menu, which is 11 moments of oceanic delight.

Sometimes it’s messy. The sea urchin toast can be eaten with the hands. The Greenlandic snow crab with burnt onion butter comes with tools for cracking and meat excavation. But the Faroe Islands are far, and they’re foodie-famous for rewriting the rules. You didn’t come here to stay clean or play it safe.

Fjord To Table—Michelin Stars And Fermented Fare In The Faroe Islands

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