Lille Herbern — Restaurant in Oslo

Let's start by saying that the food was the good thing about the place, in the sense that the fish was fresh and well-prepared. Of course, it was also quite expensive.

Our experience as a couple of 33yo was overall bad.

To get to the island, there is a small boat that costs 50kr p.p for 40 seconds of travel time. There is no agreement with the restaurant; it's just an extra cost that you have to bear and that seems a bit disproportionate.

The place doesn't allow bookings for fewer than 7 people, so as a couple, the only chance is to go there and try drop-in. On their website, they say, "Are you between 2-8 people? We always have places for drop-in guests." Well, that "always" is not "always." It turns out you might have to wait 2 hours to be seated; they have about 15 tables in total, it's a small place. We were told we had to wait long before sitting; the hovmester's words were, "I have no idea, maybe 2 hours." If I had read that on the website, we wouldn't have chosen this restaurant. My girlfriend had to buy olives because she felt unwell due to the waiting time and the hot weather, 80kr for 8 olives, to eat while standing in the bar area.

We decided to wait, but the hovmester informed us that she was going to call our turn in the waiting area, implying that we had to be around there if we wanted to keep our spot. The waiting area is the entrance part of the restaurant, which is sort of a bar only for drinks and with very few tables. As you can imagine, the area was flooded with people waiting like us. The more correct thing to do, in my opinion, would be to inform of the high waiting times on the website, and also allow people to wander around the island to have a swim or sunbathe while waiting by just sending an SMS (pretty standard these days) when the table is ready. I might think that this is done on purpose to have people spending in the bar area before the restaurant experience, which is not bad in general for a business, it's just that they don't offer enough space and services to accommodate everyone so end up looking a bit greedy in my eyes.

We finally got to sit a bit before the 2-hour mark. We sat at 18:00 and they didn't come to take our order until 18:20. We asked the waiter to bring everything all together (oysters, seafood platters to share) and we didn't see any food until 19:00. The waiter informed us that "the kitchen didn't receive the order" so they started preparing really late. We got the main plate at 19:30, after basically waiting for 1.5h starving for cold food. No bread or snacks were offered for their mistake.

My girlfriend is lactose intolerant, so we had asked if they could substitute one of the items on the seafood platter with something else, like simple fries. The waiter said ok, and in fact, the food came with 2 portions of fries instead of the Mix Skagen. They also forgot the bread that comes with the dish, so we had to remind them. The surprise came with the bill (around 4000nok) where, once far from the restaurant, we noticed they had made us pay for the fries. Not nice in my opinion, considering the money we left there already, and considering that they didn't bring us the Mix Skagen that I could have eaten, for example.

The waiters are all pretty young, and maybe that's the reason why the music is pumping disco, dance, and pop. It definitely doesn't suit the place. I go party too on the weekends, but here it clearly clashes with the customers' age range, landscape, and the image of being an exclusive restaurant on the sea.

In summary, to us it felt like an overpriced place with good food and quite bad service, that treats customers as numbers with a wallet and just doesn't deliver on the expectation of having a lovely dinner by the sea. Definitely not...

Getting there is fun, we took the Bygdøy ferry (disembarking at The Fram stop), then a short walk, followed by another small boat ride to the island. The restaurant has beautiful views and is a quiet and tranquil oasis just outside of Oslo. We opted for fish dishes, and our party of three agreed that the quality was hit and miss. Although the pasta with fish roe dish is a delicious revelation, compared to other well known fish restaurants in Oslo the overall quality of the dishes is lower. As for service, the tables are well presented, and the free sparkling/still water is a nice touch. However, like with the food, the service is also hit and miss. Some of the team of young servers are very diligent and customer concious, whereas others are in dire need of cust....

Excellent atmosphere and views! Decent food. A bit pricy and slow for what you get.

You can reach this island restaurant via the "Lille Herbern Ferry" which is a separate location on Google Maps. We came for lunch around 1pm on Sunday and walked right in. By the time we were leaving there was more of a line and others have reported the same thing. The scenery from the island is certainly beautiful!

The food is pretty good but definitely a bit overpriced. Service was slow and it took staff a few reminders to get everything we asked for. Despite this the staff were very friendly and nice. The also spoke English pretty well.

Would recommend for the experience, not...