A few weeks ago I flew from Oslo to Svalbard to visit Huset, often described as the world’s northernmost fine-dining restaurant.
Svalbard itself is extraordinary. At this time of year there’s 24-hour daylight, which does strange things to your brain. Walking home after dinner around midnight in broad daylight felt completely wrong. Beautiful, but weird. I’m not sure I could ever get used to it.
I’d love to return in winter. Summer is stark and barren, but I can imagine the polar night, snow and getting around by snowmobile making the whole experience even more surreal.
Huset sits just outside Longyearbyen, a town named after American businessman John Munro Longyear, whose Arctic Coal Company established mining operations here in the early 1900s.
The building dates from 1951 and was originally created by Store Norske as a communal meeting place for miners and company officials. Over the years it has had all sorts of uses — including a café, school, church and cinema — before becoming what it is today.
As for dinner? I’m glad I went, although the restaurant itself wasn’t really the highlight.
There were some genuinely interesting tastes to begin with — cured meats, seal and local seabirds among them — things I’d never eaten before and exactly the sort of flavours you hope to encounter somewhere this remote.
The main tasting menu was more underwhelming and the service wasn’t particularly polished. In fairness, running a serious restaurant at 78° North must bring challenges most restaurants never have to think about.
The real revelation was downstairs.
Huset has an incredible wine cellar, with some surprisingly good-value bottles hidden away. Friends had told me to go down and look properly rather than just order from the list, and they were right. I managed to find a real bargain.
Would I fly to Svalbard purely for dinner at Huset? Probably not.
Would I recommend Svalbard itself — one of the strangest settlements on Earth, unusual local ingredients and a great bottle from a ridiculous cellar at 78° North?
Absolutely. I’m very glad I went.
