Áarstova — Restaurant in Tórshavn

This restaurant is categorized as fine dining. Waitstaff take orders entirely from memory and introduce each dish upon serving: 5-star hotel service level. The set menu is simple: : 3-course or 5-course.

For an average appetite, the 3-course option is more than enough-especially since the lamb shank main is generously portioned!

🐑 Lamb Shank This signature dish is beautifully roasted: crispy outside, tender inside, with a salty crust that fades inward. The sauce, while extremely gamey-smelling, is surprisingly palatable, flavorful but very salty and a bit gamey, which may be too intense for some.

🐟 Monkfish is a safer option-well-cooked and balanced.

🍣 Salmon (Starter) Served cold. The seasoning on this dish is absolutely spot-on, featuring water celery, miso mayonnaise, arugula, and even walnuts! Both flavor and texture are layered and complex. One bite and you can feel the chef’s thoughtfulness.

🐑 Lamb Tartare A very interesting appetizer. Being called "tartare" means it’s raw lamb. Because of lamb’s strong odor and the higher risk involved with raw meat, this dish is rare and niche around the world. It requires careful prep and seasoning by the chef. It comes with egg yolk mayo and very thin fries-smooth and crunchy textures side by side, delivering a rich mouthfeel. If you're not comfortable eating raw meat, it’s better not to force yourself with this one.

🍮 Crème Caramel On the sweeter side. This dessert is relatively standard; you’ll find similar versions at other restaurants that serve caramel pudding. The most surprising dessert is actually the 1 below:

🧁Rhubarb trifle with cream n Almond Just reading the name tells you it’s a complex dessert with many elements. This is a hidden gem of the Faroe Islands, rarely seen in most restaurants. Rhubarb, in particular, is only grown in cold, high-altitude regions-making it hard to find even in European restaurants, let alone in Asia or Australia. Botanically, rhubarb is a vegetable, but in cooking, it’s often used as a fruit. Its texture falls somewhere between winter melon and celery, with a fibrous crunch. The flavor is tart with a hint of herbal aroma. From the photo, you can tell it’s loaded with cream. Once the acidity is balanced by the sugar and cream, the dessert becomes refreshingly pleasant. Crushed almonds and dried plums are also added to enhance the texture and depth. Clearly, the chef put a lot of thought into this dish.

The restaurant does not offer juice-only wine or water. For those with a modest appetite, don’t fill up on the bread beforehand-it may spoil your appetite for the delicious lamb shank later on.

🏛️ Decor & Ambiance The interior decor is vintage, with charming details in every corner. The staff is polite and considerate, often stepping aside to let guests pass. The restroom is professionally equipped, offering hot water, hand soap, and even hand cream.

However, 1 major downside: the tables are too closely packed, creating a noisy dining environment. As shown in the photos, the noise level reached a shocking 77 decibels-a nightmare for those sensitive to sound. For staff, working in such an environment long-term can even cause hearing damage!

Ideally, the restaurant should seat loud, burly diners with booming voices in a separate room, rather than subjecting everyone else-those who speak gently and carry themselves with decorum-to auditory torment.

As a restaurant positioned as fine dining, such a noisy atmosphere is clearly below standard and undermines the refined and tranquil experience that fine dining is supposed to offer. It prevents guests from calmly savoring their meals.

If a restaurant wants to maintain fine dining standards, acoustic design must be treated as equally important as food, plating, and service. Even if absolute silence isn’t achievable, the sound level should at least be kept under 60 dB, and adjusted based on the clientele. The value of a high-end restaurant lies not only in the food but also in the atmosphere and emotional experience. Sound control is essential. It’s a discipline in...

My experience of Aarstova was a tale of two halves.

It started very bad. It took 30-minutes for our drinks to be served and 25-minutes to get our orders taken. The server did compensate those drinks, which was appreciated - but the first 30-45 minutes was very frustrating to say the least.

But on the food, I largely cannot fault it. The Faroe Islands generally has a pretty terrible food scene. Aarstova is a clear exception to that rule as the quality of the salmon starter, the lamb, and the lemon meringue dessert was of a very high standard. The lamb and lemon dessert being particularly exceptional. My partner had the rhubarb dessert which I sampled, and I thought it let the whole meal down. It was more than sub-standard. In fact, we dined at a pretty average place the next day whose rhubarb dessert was significantly better. It simply didn't match the flavour and standard of every other dish. Nor was I a fan of the bread served to the table. It is very dry and rubbery (something I have found with bread generally in the Faroe Islands).

But back to the servers, and they almost seemed it was their first day on the job. Flustered, often not knowing the detail of the dishes. In one case, I was told what was in my dish after my plate was emptied. Very bizarre. One server brought us a second round of bread not knowing that we hadn't even finished the first round (we didn't even want a second round anyway). I could go on, but the servers let the place down. They aren't trained enough; it's obvious.

Had the service matched the high quality of the food, this place would have went down as one of the best I have visited in a very long time. The flavours of many dishes are great.

Would I come back? Yes - in fact I will next year. I hope by then the issues with the servers...

Forget old reviews. Alas, the 2024 international staff is on the way to Michelin Stars.

I'm so past being a food snob, totally over expensive food, and glamorous executive chefs. Yet . . .

Not since the earliest days of French Laundry have we experienced local ingredients presented so ingeniously and labor intensively, as art.

Adding an exciting twist, on top of the delicious local ingredients, is the staff. It's truly food as performance art with a knowledgeable, youthful passion that captures you even before you are shown the kitchen.

No waiters or dishwashers, operating out of a kitchen smaller than on a yacht, in a tiny historic home, the collection of chefs serves up an incredible diversity of flavors and texture.

If you're lucky enough to get a reservation, you pay on booking, you're in for an event you can't believe you would find in this remote outpost.

By the way, I waited a full month before reviewing to see if my food and wine paring stupor would wear off. It didn't. It's almost an Alice in Wonderland experience.

I will let others post photos that will impress, yet fail to capture...