7 remote restaurants in the Nordics worth the trip

Almost two decades ago, fine dining changed forever in the Nordics. Cultivated by chef Rene Redzepi in his gastronomic Copenhagen mecca Noma, the approach was simple: pared-back plates prioritising high-quality, seasonal, and local ingredients that celebrate pure, uncomplicated flavour combinations. Unsurprisingly, the method spread like wildfire worldwide and firmly planted this northern part of the world on the culinary map.

These days, if you travel to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo or Reykjavik, restaurants cooking within the New Nordic genre are a dime a dozen found on just about every street corner, regulars on both Michelin and the World’s 50 Best lists.

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Travel further afield – out into the wilderness – and you begin to understand what ‘New Nordic’ dining truly means. It’s a kitchen garden that, somehow, thrives in the remote Arctic Circle, buried under a thick layer of ice for half the year. It’s a restaurant cooking world-class food on the edge of a fishing inlet in Lofoten. It’s hidden in a field in the farthest regions of the Faroe Islands.

They say it’s just as much about the journey as the destination, and these remote restaurants prove precisely that. Talk about earning your dinner.

To get to Til Elise fra Marius, you first need to make your way to Bodo or Trondheim. From there, you hop aboard one of the dinky Widerøe propeller planes that service most of remote northern Norway and fly to the tiny airport in the industrial town of Mo i Rana. From there, it’s just an easy 45-minute drive out to Utskarpen, where you’ll find Til Elise fra Marius holding court at the mouth of the fjord.

Owned by partners Elise Bratteng Rønning and Marius Martinsen, the restaurant celebrates local produce as much as possible — sourced from its kitchen garden and from local suppliers. Martinsen and Bratteng Rønning met working at some of Olso’s top restaurants before choosing to return to Helgeland to set up their dream restaurant in Bratteng Rønning’s hometown.

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While the Lofoten islands may have exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to their incredible hikes, superlative scenery, and wild, remote nature, the area is home to some world-class restaurants, too. Fangst sits on the water’s edge at Hattvika Lodge in Ballstad, a 15-minute drive from the small town of Leknes.

The 'Ode to Lofoten' menu is a six-course celebration of the region’s unique produce paired with wines from around the world. Dine while staring at the snow-capped mountains, feeling like you’re at the end of the earth.

For many years, Koks was housed in an isolated field in the Faroe Islands, accessed by a bumpy Land Rover ride from a designated meeting point at a cabin on Lake Leynavatn. It was often labelled as ‘the most remote Michelin-starred restaurant in the world’ and perfectly toed the line between experiential and genuinely exceptional food.

In 2022, the restaurant announced it was moving even further afield, to the small town of Ilimanaq in Greenland, for two seasons while it tried to find a new, more permanent location in the Faroe Islands. Take the journey into the Arctic Circle this summer, or keep your eyes peeled for news on where this elusive restaurant will settle next.

A little on the nose for fans of the recent horror-comedy The Menu, Iris promises all the seclusion and experiential elements of the film’s restaurant, Hawthorn, minus the murder (so far, anyway). Located on Hardangerfjord within a floating art installation that vaguely resembles a burnished UFO, getting to the restaurant is all part of the experience.

Kicking off at the waterfront in Rosendal, you’re whisked off on a boat, first stopping at the restaurant’s boatshed for snacks and welcome drinks before continuing the journey to Iris itself. Fittingly, given the artwork the restaurant is housed in – Salmon Eye – was commissioned by the family who owns the world’s first carbon-neutral salmon farm, the meal is less of a menu and more of a story interrogating both the challenges facing our food industry and the opportunities we have to better it.

Is dinner on a lava field not exciting enough for you? How about a Michelin-starred dinner on a lava field next to one of the world’s most infamous geothermal lagoons? That’s the bill at Moss, the one-Michelin-starred restaurant in the Retreat at the Blue Lagoon on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula.

The menu focuses on the best of Icelandic produce, including ingredients grown in geothermally heated greenhouses, Icelandic lamb, which is renowned for its full flavour and vaguely salty nature, and an abundance of seafood, with everything from hand-dived sea urchin to langoustines gracing the plates.

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Deep in the Swedish wilderness, an hour’s drive from the nearest airport, Arctic Bath seems to rise out of the land like a bird’s nest jutting out into the Lule River (or, if it’s winter, an endless expanse of ice). Catering primarily to hotel guests, the restaurant focuses on both local ingredients and showcasing Sámi dishes where possible.

Expect a lot of Arctic Char and reindeer meat, lingonberries and cloudberries, and dairy from down the road, all translated into a five-course feast. If you’re visiting in the summertime, chefs take advantage of the abundant surrounding forest. At the same time, winter meals will see the fruits of their labour in the warmer months put away to be pickled, cured and fermented to keep plates bright even when the landscape is frozen over.

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Many restaurants can claim the uniqueness of their Michelin stars – the longest-held, the youngest chef, the most remote, but how about… the most northern? Yep – Tapio in Finland, which nabbed its first star in this year’s ceremony, can officially be called the world’s most northern Michelin-star restaurant.

Sitting pretty in Ruka, a Finnish mountain town in the country’s east, Tapio is run by British chef Connor and his Finnish partner Johanna. After moving back to the latter’s hometown and struggling to find work, they decided to open Tapio, focusing on the abundant local larder in the area and making this the perfect punctuation to a long day on the slopes. To get there, take a one-hour flight from Helsinki to Kuusamo and then drive 25 minutes to Ruka.