Exploring the Faroe Islands is hungry work and so, after a rather busy day on the island, it’s easy to understand why all my thoughts switched right from sight-seeing and exploring straight to food! 🍜
Luckily, in Tórshavn (the capital of the islands), there’s quite a lot of choice for delicious food (Faroese or otherwise) and as we hadn’t had anything Faorese yet, the choice was simple – we would be heading out to try some of the best Faroese food in all the the land and that would have to be at Barbara.
Barbara is right in the centre of the city (next to the harbour) and can down a quite stone paved road…
There’s so much choice on offer here so we did the easy (or perhaps, lazy) thing and went with the tasting menu! Tasting menus are fast becoming my favourite thing as its such an easy way to try thing you’d otherwise overlook.
Everything here, even down to the servers, feels very traditionally Faroese (at least from my limited knowledge of Faroese traditions) and the restaurant is soooo very cosy! (Especially so as it was freezing outside and the heating inside was on at full blast).
We started off with wines and cocktails…
… before jumping into a healthy salad starter.
Swiftly followed by gigantic mussels… (the biggest I’ve ever seen)
…which go down a treat!
We moved on to several fish dishes… seeing as the Faroe Islands are exactly just that – islands, no meal here would be complete without fish on the menu!
We started off with the monkfish…
…before moving on to the perch – which, by the way, is as delicious as it is terrifying looking.
The main fish attraction however comes in the form of Bacalao, dried and salted cod – a Nordic favourite! The drying and salting is actually done to preserve the fish but it add such a fantastic flavouring to the fish you wouldn’t get otherwise once it’s cooked and served with the pil pil sauce.
We finished off the mains with the Barbara fish soup – a delicious mix of freshly chopped vegetables, fish (duh! 🙂 ) and croutons – all washed down with a fish broth!
So. soooo. good! Delicious comfort food right there. 🙂
By this point, my trouser waistband was starting to get stretched to it’s limit but I’ve never been known to say no to dessert and I didn’t plan on starting then so I went ahead and had a deconstructed cheesecake (not the official name but what it reminded me of).
Suffice it to say, I went to bed that night a very happy (and well fed) chappy!
The next morning, we got up bright and early to experience a different side of the island – by horse back!
We spent some time getting to know our horses (mine was the cheeky one of the lot while Lloyd’s the more ‘relaxed’ one) and off we went galloping into the mountains!
Okay, fine – we didn’t do much galloping to start with but about halfway through – we went full throttle (so exciting – I’ve never wanted more to be a cowboy than at that very moment).
After a couple of hours running loose on the rugged Faroese countryside, we headed back to the stables, where my horse proceeded to do somewhat of a victory dance right in the centre of the place!
I mean, I know I had a lot to eat at dinner last night but come on! 😀 😉
These horses, by the way, are actually Icelandic horses. As it turns out, Faroese horses are stubborn and have a mind of their own (kinda like the Faroese weather) so they don’t get ridden much. 🙂
The horses here are so lovely and so playful! Half the fun was riding around on them but the other half was definitely ‘horsing around’ with them! 😉
With that, we said farewell to the horses and went off in search of food!
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