Dinner at Koks

Yesterday we dined at Koks, a Faroese fusion cuisine restaurant. By any measure, it was the most unique dining experience for us to date. The meal was prepared solely from local ingredients, often meaning “picked up from the backyard or the front yard of the house”. We had the sampling menu with juice pairing (I don’t really know if they have something other than the sampling menu). I tried to capture all the courses on camera, but there were too many, and I missed one.

Our kids asked us to describe the dishes, so here we are just going to try to show what it was, even though the description will not do this dinner any justice.

The dinner started with first juice pairing — Green Gooseberry.

Mahogany clam was served with dill sauce and some sort of radish. The waitress told us that this type of clam lives for 500 years, but based on the size of ours, it was around 250 year old. “Of course, it’s fresh”, she added just in case we inferred differently.

These were a pair of crackers made of dried fish with shaved horsemussel.

Next was a marinated sea urchin (raw) with spinach purée.

A slice of fermented lamb served on fried lichen. Our waitress said that the lamb was hung outside of the restaurant for about 6 months before being served.

Not really sure what it was but it tasted nice. The menu said it was fermented leek. There was some sort of sauce present as well.

Who would have thought that lamb fat is this tasty. I still think that it all depends on how it was cooked and presented. It was mixed with something else, sprinkled with dried fish shavings, and resembled smooth cream with just a hint of lamb specific flavor.

After a heavy dish, we were given a refreshing course of rhubarb compote (just a drop or two) between leaves of nasturtium.

Cod and watercress. It was served with a cracker (possibly seaweed, but I’m not sure) that covered the whole dish. Underneath we discovered a “pond” with water lilies made of cream and cucumbers… And still underneath was cod representing pond water.

Crab meat with freeze dried buckwheat and salted capelin roe.

The restaurant has an open floor plan, so while we were eating we could observe the chefs preparing our dishes.

Next juice pairing was rosehip and red currant.

Each dish came with a description of ingredients, but unfortunately we missed some. This, however, we remember because it included herbs and flowers collected by Koks staff that morning. I recognized the yellow flowers, they grew around the restaurant (I had photographed them just before the dinner).

Next juice was very unexpected in terms of ingredients and flavor. Elderberry and dill perfectly complement each other and are unforgettably delicious together in the right combination.

A very simple dish. Raw langoustine was served on top of hot rocks and a smoking spruce.

In this type of cuisine the emphasis is equally divided between presentation and taste. However, the atmosphere at the cooks’ table was very minimalist, no hot pots or frying pans. The cooking part was done somewhere else. The guests saw only the assembly part of each dish.

This is just me, during the dinner.

Rich and tasty black currant and apple juice.

Lamb head without brain, fully cooked in a creamy potato soup. Alex attempted a joke along the lines that deciding if this dish was tasty was a no-brainer but gave up midway and just started eating it.

Fulmar with pickled beets. Fulmars look like seagulls, so we basically ate a seagull. It was tasty but kind of freaky. “No freakier than eating quail,” says Alex. Well, yes, but no.

Next came the desserts. I forgot to take a picture of the first one, lemon and verbena tea sprinkled with oil (I don’t remember which oil, but it was not olive).

My favorite dessert, sorrel sorbet and grass ice cream.

The waitress told us that they picked the seaweed for this dessert from the pier just across the street. I guess it feels nice to be independent from food supplies and rely on what can be found on your front yard that day :). The dish also included fermented blueberries and freeze dried chocolate.

Faroese or not, we had to finish the dinner with a cup of coffee with some traditional Scandinavian cookies.