I'd promised myself that I'd try at least some of the local specialities, which you simply can't get in the UK. So, just before we left, we went to the restaurant of the Hotel Hafnia, in the centre of the capital, Torshavn. Hotel Hafnia, Aarvegur 4-10 Torshavn Faroe Islands tel +298 31 32 33 email hafnia@hafnia.fo Despite it being during the national holiday, there was no trouble getting a table. We had reserved one, but it wasn't necessary. The service throughout was attentive, but not overly so, which is a good thing - having a waiter hovering over your shoulder throughout the meal is irritating, and makes me want to gut them with a broken plate. There was no problem with language, and the menu and wine list included English translations. The decor is modern but not intrusive, the seats comfortable, and the background music awful. Film theme music should stay in the cinema. The wine list was fairly basic, but we ended up with a nice robust red. By London standards it was hideously expensive, but all alcohol is expensive throughout the Faroes - expect to pay a fiver for a pint of the best local beer in one of the few pubs. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about wine, and it wasn't quite what I expected based upon the description on the wine list. Bad translation, or just me not understanding it right - who knows. And who cares, it went well with the meal. The "Faroese menu" - nothing but national specialities - gave us little choice. There was one starter, one main course, and one dessert. The starter was a selection of morsels from some of the other dishes the islands are famous for. Along with some token green stuff (and I don't know why they bothered with it), there was some dried fish, some slivers of smoked lamb, slices from a pilot whale sausage, and some whale blubber in jelly. Yes, fat in fat. My arteries scream at the very thought! The dried fish was nothing special. Smoked lamb was certainly interesting, and something I wouldn't have thought would work, but it did. The whale, and of course the blubber, was very rich, and tastes somewhat like goat, but more salty and with a touch of iodine. It was far too rich to have as a starter normally, but seeing that the aim was to try as many of the local dishes as possible, it worked well. The accompanying bread was good and solid. I like the sort of bread you can build houses out of, like the Russians and Germans do so well, and most of the bread over there, even in the stupormarkets, got my approval. For the main course - two braised puffins each (they're quite small birds) with pretty much all the veggies that will grow in the islands! That is, taters, broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, all of which were done just right so they still had texture and flavour. The puffins were smothered in a slightly spicy, and very creamy, gravy. Puffin tastes nothing like what you'd expect from a bird. It's almost like liver, but slightly porky. About the only way in which it's like any other bird I've eaten is the texture, and even that was a little finer and denser than I expected. Finally, for dessert, we had what the menu called rhubarb soup (rhubarb being the only other crop I saw growing) with the decidedly non-traditional creme brulee. It wasn't soup (a bad translation I guess), more a very sweet syrup, like what you use when you're canning or jarring your own rhubarb, with slices of cooked rhubarb floating in it, the whole lot then chilled. It was a weird combination, but by god did they go well together. Of all three courses, it's the only one you could make here, and I heartily recommend it. Finally, the coffee was up to the Faroes usual high standards. In all the time there, I didn't have a single bad coffee, even from vending machines. Machine coffee, of course, wasn't good, but it was still tolerable. If a bunch of Vikings stuck on rocks in the middle of the Atlantic can get coffee right, why the hell can't Londoners? Grrr. The whole meal was very enjoyable, if painful on the wallet (150 quid for two people, including two bottles of wine, but this can not be sensibly compared to London prices), and I certainly recommend it if any of you are ever in the Faroes.