The Salmon Eye is a new, UFO-shaped floating restaurant located in Norway's second largest fjord. Photo / Supplied, Eide Fjordbruk
It’s a restaurant Jim, but not as we know it.
A lonely Norwegian Fjord. A strange UFO-shaped object. A $500 dining experience that has taken the 1500km and four years to arrive, but appears to have come from a place lightyears from Hardangerfjord.
Lakseøye or the Salmon Eye is a floating feast for the senses.
Sightings of the UFO-shaped restaurant helmed by chef Anika Madsen have been drawing foodies to this remote part of Norway since it opened this year.
With only a salmon farm for neighbours, it’s a dining experience that is ‘boldly going’ where few diners have gone before. Serving local sea produce on the icy waters of Scandinavia’s second largest fjord, the restaurant ‘Iris’ promises a menu “impossible to replicate anywhere else.”
Still the restaurant’s critics can’t agree if it’s from a horror film or a sci-fi marvel.
The floating restaurant is a bubble-shaped structure, covered in almost 10,000 stainless steel scales. The only way for guests to reach the “double-curved ellipsoid” is by an electric boat from the town of Rosendal.
There are no roads where they’re going.
Although structure itself appears to have landed from space, it made an impressive journey to get there. The restaurant was made in Tallinn, Estonia, out of 1256 tonnes of metal. Chef Madsen too has travelled far from her native Denmark to explore the fjords.
“Here on the Norwegian coast, I can explore a whole universe below the surface that I could only dream of in Copenhagen,” she says.
“This region offers some of the cleanest and most exciting seafood produce in the world.”
The menu however cannot budge to accommodate guests with dietary requirements. The kitchens deal exclusively with fare sourced from the deepest sounds of the local waters to the vertical climbs of the walls. Think red sea urchin, seaweed, grilled reindeer heart and game meat.
The NOK 3 200 ($513) 18-course meal is not to be undertaken lightly. With only 24 places per sitting, the mammoth meal is drawn out over six hours.
This is an experience unsuitable for vegans, vegetarians, or guests with seafood allergies.
Since its arrival in spring, the mysterious dining experience has become a feeding frenzy of speculation online.
Set over brooding, steely waters, some diners have compared it to Ridley Scott sci-fi films like Alien: Covenant or Arrival.
Others said the experience reminded them of the 2022 horror film The Menu, where a twisted chef plated by Ralph Finnes invites guests to an exclusive restaurant on a remote island, for sinister reasons.
Madsen thankfully is more interested in serving sustainable, native produce to guests than making them into sashimi.
However there is a hidden truth to Iris’s mysterious arrival, that lies close beneath the surface.
The Salmon Eye is owned by Eide Fjordbruk, a group of Norwegian salmon farms.
The 32-year old “aquaculture” magnate, Sondre Eide commissioned the project after taking ownership of the company from his late father Knut Frode Eide, four years ago.
Eide invited Madsen to steer the project from her previous work as head chef at Roxie and Fasangården, Copenhagen.
“It is inspiring to meet people like Anika that shares the same passion for always improving,” said Eide.
The restaurant claims to be the world’s largest floating art installation and a think tank for sustainable salmon farming.
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