Fine dining with a fine view at Bølgen & Moi

I visited the place Bølgen & Moi in the end of April 2007 in connection with a work related event. This restaurant is located in connection with the Oil museum in Stavanger and you can see where it is located by checking out this interactive Google map that I have made: http://gardkarlsen.com/stavanger_map.htm . The name of the place is derived from the two guys Toralf Bølgen and Trond Moi who are both well known names in the Norwegian food/restaurant industry and you can also find Bølgen & Moi restaurants in some other Norwegian cities. Bølgen & Moi in Stavanger is located with a view of the harbour and the view was lovely on this nice spring afternoon. We were served aperitifs as new participants joined our party and the staff was observant when they noticed that a new face had arrived at the table. We decided to go for a 5 course meal with the wine package so we all had the same meal. The place is not a gourmet restaurant by the way...the head of the restaurant Hammersvik prefers to call it a brassiere. There is a review of the place in the local Stavanger newspaper: http://www.rogalandsavis.no/bruland/article2712552.ece (only in Norwegian).

The table was set in a funky way when we came there and we all had each our huge and colourful plate in from of us. We got a starter before we started on the main meal by the way and I think it was a rocket soup. I'm not sure what stock was used in the soup but it was very tasty :-) The same goes for the focaccia bread that was served with a lovely olive dip on the side. We got a Riesling kabinett, Dr. Loosen 2005 for this meal and we kept this when the first course was served: scallop. To serve scallop at restaurants seems to be pretty common and in this case we got two served with a purée of cauliflower and blood orange vinaigrette. It is always nice with scallops but maybe it was a bit much with two...as the evening progressed some of the guests felt there was too much food to be handled :-)

From the scallops we moved on the monkfish served on risotto with vanilla and rosemary foam. Monkfish is my favourite fish and it tasted excellent as usual. And risotto is one of my favourite dishes and it was made just the right way in this meal. This was a lovely dish that I can recommend if you decide to just order from the menu. We had a Saint Veran, Cave-Prissé 2005 along with this dish.

We continued with lamb served with lentils, sweetbread, portobello mushroom and tomato. The meat was a bit to rare for my likings but it was tasty. The potatoes were very good and I'm a bit curious on how it was made. It seemed like they were sliced and then put back again and fried. We had a Spanish Rijoa by the name of Muga for this dish. I have had this on a few other occasions and it is a great wine that goes well with lamb.

The next course was a bit of cheese with bread and something sweet. I'm not sure that the sweet bit was but it was good together with the cheese and the wine. The blue mould cheese was good and not to extreme like it was at Craigs :-) The dessert this evening was a passion fruit tart with strawberry sherbet and raspberry cream...the sherbet was lovely and fresh and the tart was sweet and delicious. We had a Riesling Beerenauslese 2005 for the dessert by the way. We ended the meal with some coffee and something extra on the side and all of a sudden we noticed that we were alone in the restaurant. Time flies when you are having fun :-)

Conclusion: check out Bølgen & Moi if you haven't been there. We got great food, great service and a lovely view of the harbour in Stavanger. The only negative comment was that some felt there was too much food in this meal :-) On the plus side I have to mention that the waiters always made sure that we had some wine and they would refill during the meal if we finished a glass. We had to pay about 1200 kroner per person for the meal (about 200 $). You can read a bit more about Bølgen & Moi on their web page http://www.bolgenogmoi.no/ .


Regards
Gard
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