Kvitnes Gård – Farm-to-Table Dining at 200-Year-Old Farm

We are here in Lofoten, up in the very northern part of Norway. It's absolutely beautiful. We're sitting here on the rooftop right now of the brand new Ton Hotel in Svolvær. I mean, just look at this location. It's hard to beat. These majestic mountains behind me, these crystal clear fjords. I can't wait to get out and explore. Hopefully we can take a boat out and cruise around, maybe even go on a fishing boat. That's one of the unique things that this hotel offers, is an excursion where you can fish. Then you can come back and learn how to fillet your fish. Then you can eat the fish that you caught for dinner in the brasserie. I'm really looking forward to that. While we're here, we're also going to go up to Kvitnesgård, which is the most famous restaurant in the area. We're going to stay at the farm, and we're going to have an amazing tasting menu. Suddenly we heard piano music playing. It came from a boat docked by the hotel. All rooms here are equipped with binoculars, so you can fully take in the view. Don't miss out on the room service breakfast. And for lunch, you want to check out the pizza, made in a wood-fired stone oven by a real Italian pizzaiolo. In the evening, you can enjoy the fish you caught earlier. The chefs gave it a round in the Jasper Grill and served it with chanterelles and a sauce of shellfish. Ready for a road trip? I'm ready. You're driving? Yep, I'm driving. I'm in the passenger seat, taking it all in. We've got a two-hour drive ahead of us. But it should be beautiful. Scenic routes. Through mountains, underwaters. In tunnels, over fjords. Oh yes, that's driving in Norway. Where are we going? Kvitnesgård, in Vesterålen. Why? To eat, of course. I heard they have some good food there. It looks amazing. Let's go see. We are here in Vesterålen, in the north of Norway, to have dinner at Kvitnesgård, which is an old farmhouse turned into a restaurant. Chef Halvor Ellingsen worked for 10 years in Oslo, at some of the best restaurants in town, before deciding to come back to his roots here in Kvitnes, at his great-great-granddad's old farm. He's rebuilt it and turned it into an amazing food destination. This is farm-to-table in the truest sense of the word. They grow all their own vegetables and use their own animals to craft an exceptional tasting menu. And then if you stay the night, you can have an amazing farm breakfast in the morning. My name is Halvor Ellingsen, and this is Kvitnesgård. So my great-great-granddad built the farm in the start of the 1800s. So in the first floor, it's the restaurant. In the second floor, we have five double rooms. And we have ten more rooms in a different kind of building. So we really like people to come here and stay for overnight, and to give us one day of their lives, so we can spoil them and show them. First of all, you'll get three rounds of snacks. First, some raw vegetables. Sugarcane, which we picked this morning. There's a small bunch of different salads and herbs. Inside, there's a small herb mayonnaise. You'll get some things from the ocean, and some things from the forest, so you'll get real food, and steak, and the water is cold. Kvitnesgård is many things, but mostly it's a farm with a restaurant. So we have lambs, hens, whales, and cows and pigs. Straight from the whales. Chips made of barley, and mayonnaise made of seaweed. All the vegetables we get today are from the farm. In the fall, we usually pick something that's preserved. But this is from several years ago. The moose is a moose, which I and my brother shot in the forest. All the raw materials we use are from the farm. Lofoten, Lausannia. We buy sugar and starch. We have better things to do than boil in seawater, boil sugar, and things like that. The bread is inspired by traditional Sami handle bread. After we bake it and grill it, we brush it with truffle seaweed. And the butter is from a local farm. It's a single-cow butter. It tastes like penne-chef. The childhood memories. The halibut is one of the signature dishes we do. We buy as small as possible, around six kilos, and then we salt it for two hours, and we grill it with a lot of hay, so we get this really intense smoked flavor. We serve it with a sauce made of almost-burnt cream and almost-burnt butter, and with mackerel gallop. You need to use the whole animal. We split up the main course into two different servings. The first serving can be heart or kidneys, or whatever. And the other part is tough meat that needs a lot of cooking. We boil them, and then we deep-fry them and salivate afterwards. And then we serve it like a more straight main course dish. Lamb shoulder, grilled all day, with the kale, parsley, and a sauce made of lamb, whey, and brown butter. Another signature dish we have is a blood pancake with blackcurrant and salted lamb. Ice cream made of goat yogurt, and pine chips. It feels so right for cleanness, since we're using the blood and salted lamb, and the blackcurrants and goat cheese in the ice cream. It's been with us since we opened, and I think it's going to stay for a long time. Thanks for following along on our adventures in Lofoten. See you next time, Svolvær! If you like our work, support us on Patreon, where we also have a food community called The Hungrys. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more food and travel videos. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at andershusa and carnivore. Thanks for watching!