Fish & Cow — Restaurant in Stavanger

We went to Fish & Cow late in the afternoon on a Wednesday in April and the place was quite empty when we got there. I have been there a couple of times in the past and the food has been good but with concrete walls it has also been quite noisy when the restaurant is packed. It seems like they have done some changes to the place (carpets and curtains) and maybe this will fix the issue.

The menu was presented and we decided to go for steamed buns and risotto to start with and then spare ribs shared as a main meal. We also decided to go for a glass of wine each. Wine is expensive when you buy it at a restaurant in Norway but it is quite a bit when you have to pay 140 kroner (17 USD). Luckily the Norwegian kroner is quite weak these days so at least it won’t feel that bad for foreigners.

We got some bread when the steamed buns and risotto was served. The bread was toasted and was maybe a bit on the oily side and the honey butter on the side was too sweet in my opinion. The steamed buns were lovely with a good piece of pork belly and intriguing Asian flavors. The risotto was a risotto prima vera – a risotto with vegetables. I like risotto a lot and I think this was excellent. It was rich and creamy and there were lots of flavors from the peas in the dish. There were also pieces of asparagus in the dish but they did not seem to impact the dish as much as the peas.

The main dish was baby back ribs served with a Korean bbq sauce. The fries were fresh and tasted great and the baby back ribs were good but I was maybe expecting them to be even juicier.

To get a full experience I also went for dessert. I first asked the waiter about the frozen cheesecake and it turned out to be a non-baked cheese cake and I’m not sure that I agree calling a cake a cheesecake when it is not baked. I decided to go for the chocolate fondant with vanilla ice. The dessert was presented in a beautiful way and the chocolate fondant was warm and had a runny center.

All in all Fish & Cow still works. The location is great (right at the city square), the menu is not extensive but has some interesting dishes. But it was a bit on the price side. We had the dishes mentioned above and three glasses of wine and that was 1000 Norwegian...

I usually do not have any expectations when I go to a restaurant for the first time but this one is hard not to rate low on the service side. Service as soon as you enter the door was immediately surprising and weird with a staff member standing behind the bar (which was the first thing you will encounter when you enter) asking "What do you want?!?" They didn't even ask: "Do you have a reservation?" Only when my husband said that we have a reservation that someone actually led us to our table and given the menus. The place was crowded and I was thinking maybe they're all just overwhelmed.

But we only got asked if we wanted any drinks about 5 mins (probably more because by then we were ready to order our food) after we were seated.

At some point, someone blasted the music up to such a high volume and I think most of the people in the restaurant were a bit shocked (and mostly annoyed) by the cranked up music. Someone eventually turned the music down (probably after a customer complained).

The decent service we got was from two young staff who got us our orders- the first was really nice and got our orders for our drinks, starters and mains and the second one for dessert - and we got out starters at a decent time. We had different main dishes (beef cheeks, skrei and risotto) and they were all good but we could have had the same quality of food at a different restaurant at a more decent price).

Their food is good, except that they are quite overpriced even in a country like Norway and a city like Stavanger. Most of the staff look very young and look like they're doing their internship or on the job training and they're mostly running around the restaurant to get things done. The layout of the restaurant could also probably use a rethink to make it less crowded and easier to manage even when fully booked.

Price range: Expect to pay 2500+++NOK for 3 people. Imagine paying for a NOK190 dessert (a chocolate mousse which was delicious but even more expensive than the glass of wine that my husband got) that with that price tag you would expect would be at least shareable.

Overall, it's a decent three considering the food, service and atmosphere but way too overpriced...

We were here as a group of 8 for a 3 course meal after I had been here a year ago. The quality has decreased. The fish that was ordered by half our group was very good but the steaks we received were tasteless, with little sauce, not very tender and small. Vegetables excellent. They ran out of of vanilla ice cream for the apple pie and just told us it would be chocolate. That was not a good combination and no effort was made to give us something extra or a discount on the inconvenience. The service was fine for norwegian standards though a bit slow and atmosphere was nice, it looks like a quality place. We will not be returning for our team dinners though. We would have been extremely disappointed if we paid for...