(Editor’s note: This review, written in the spring of 2018 as the opening of a planned ebook that remains unfinished, is being published in advance of the 60th birthday celebration of Huset on Saturday, when lordagsbiff will be served from 2-6 p.m. for 60 kroner.)
This is what it’s like to eat the ultimate traditional community meal in the world’s northernmost town.
You enter an unremarkable and isolated building near the foot of a glacier three kilometers from the town square, well past the walking range of tourists paying more than ten times as much to eat a tasting menu in the famous formal restaurant in an adjacent room. You take a quick left into a casual bistro just past the no-attendant (and thus no-tip) coat room, where a half-empty assortment of booths and tables with a bar against a long wall next to the kitchen awaits.