Sjøhuset Skagen is now Skagen Restaurant!

Back in 1976 the restaurant Sjøhuset Skagen opened in Stavanger and it was one of the first (if not the first) restaurants outside a hotel in Stavanger. Over the years it has been a rock in the Stavanger restaurant scene but in the end of 2016 it closed and it has now re-opened as “Skagen Restaurant”. The building that houses the restaurant dates back to 1780 so there is a lot of history here.
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We went for dinner there on a Tuesday night and I guess that people don’t know that it has re-opened yet as it was pretty quiet. The interior has been modernized a bit but they have still kept the heavy wooden structure feel to the place. We sat down and got the menu fast and decided to have a clipfish (salted and dried cod) skewer as a starter and I decided to have skrei as main meal. Skrei is arctic cod which is only in season in the beginning of the year.
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We got some bread and butter to start with which was great as I was starving and the bread seemed to be sourdough bread with a hint of caraway. But it didn’t take long before the skewer was served with aioli in a small cup, tomato salsa and oven baked potatoes. I enjoy my clipfish and I always like the salty and firm meat. This skewer was no exception – I enjoyed the clipfish pieces but the bacon pieces in between was a bit too fatty in my opinion. According to the menu there should also be chili in this dish but I did not taste any chili. The tomato salsa was very good.
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The main dish was served soon after and my skrei meal was maybe not a pretty sight. Many traditional Norwegian meals are a bit bland in colors. The skrei was served with the roe, pan-fried skrei tongue, carrots – and on the side the skrei liver and butter sauce. It is great to see that you can use so much of the same fish to create a meal. The skrei was all white and the layers that came of when putting the fork into it. I would have preferred the fish to be a bit firmer – some parts of the fish seemed a bit overdone. The roe does not have that much taste and feels firm in texture until you start to break it down. All of a sudden you can feel that it is fish eggs. The cod tongues are also good – I have tried to make this at home as well but I guess it is not that common any more.
All in all a good meal with roots in the Norwegian kitchen. But the question is if this is a place that we will keep on coming back to if we want an exciting meal. I think it will be popular amongst Stavanger visitors as the house has a history and the food is Norwegian inspired – and these days it is not easy to find a place that serves Norwegian food in Stavanger. I hope that Skagen Restaurant will succeed and that it will continue to be an “institution” of Stavanger restaurants in the years to come.
A skrei meal was 340 kroner, fish & chips 230 kroner. You can see menu and prices on the restaurant homepage.
Regards
Gard
gardkarlsen.com
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