Today we visited Torshavn (pronounced "Tor-shawn"), the capital of the
Faroe Islands. While these remote islands are technically a part of
Denmark, they rely only on that kingdom for international relations,
military and currency (the Danish kroner or crown). There is a local
parliament with prime minister and since these islands of less than
50,000 (with 17,000 in the capital) located halfway between Norway and
Iceland are so isolated they pretty much have their own cuisine that
has little to do with the rest of Scandanavia.
We decided to pop into the KAFE KASPAR in the Hotel Hafni in the
middle of town for a bite after our tour and ordered the local tasting
platter, which while interesting, was not a revelation, and indeed,
was a shock when the $60 tab for two arrived! Prices here are probably
the highest I have seen anywhere in the world, and we managed not to
buy even a thing (the t-shirts all seemed to ring in at $20-30!).
The platter consisted of yummy black bread and butter, a pile of small
sweet local shrimp, superb smoked salmon and delectable herring
fillets. The most popular local dish was also on the platter and the
"air dried" sheep is very akin to a thick sliced sheep carpaccio.
While technically "raw" it has been dried and aged. It does not have
much flavor and could have benefited from some mustard or such. The
reason this dish is #1 on the local palate is that the sheep
population outnumbers the locals at about 70,000 head. The two other
local dishes that were a bit harder to "digest" was the dried fish,
which is a small piece of smelt-like fish salted and dried. It is
tasty and we were told is to be used to wrap around the final local
delicacy, salted whale (pilot whale to be exact) blubber. The blubber
is in small cubes and is chewy and extremely oily. Combined with the
dried fish it is a bit more palatable (we were told to also dip this
in butter, which seemed to also improve the taste), but Will decided
he could not fathom the rubbery texture (think oily chewy clam).
The local Faroese cider was barely alcoholic (like 4%) and was the
perfect palate cleanser between tastes.
It was nice to try local tastes, but I can't say I'll rush back to
Torshavn for much more than a regular fish meal minus the whale.
