Maskinverkstedet — Restaurant in Tromsø

When our travel plans changed due to weather, my husband and I started looking for a place to have dinner in Tromso. I stumbled across Maskinverkstedet. I emailed them to ask if they had availability (this was at about 2 PM - day of) I received a response within about 20 minutes. They did have availability and gave us a choice between 2 different time slots. So 5 stars for customer service! The decor and ambiance is also appealing. Our waitress was great - super attentive. For appetizers we ordered the reindeer tartare and the pumpkin soup. For mains, my husband ordered the fish and I ordered the braised beef. My husband said "his appetizer was good, but not the best he has had." My pumpkin soup had some bits of rutabega in there (small cubes) that were undercooked and the hazelnuts seemed weirdly out of place in the soup. I would not order the soup again. The mains were better than the apps. My braised beef was tender and falvourful and was a very generous portion served over a potato puree along with some cauliflower and artichokes. The fish of the day was steamed cod. Again I got a similar response "It was good." We were very full and skipped dessert. Lovely place, great...

Very nice restaurant. Great atmosphere and nice staff. We got some delicious wine. I think is a nice, a bit fancy Norwegian cuisine, very similar to other Scandinavian restaurants. From the starters, we tried the crab, which was super tasty and nice but the size of the dish and the amount of crab was ridiculously small. The beef tartar was also delicious and it was great combination with the goat cheese, which was super nice. From the main dishes, we tried the halibut which was amazing, and the sauce was also great. The reindeer steak was also nice. I really recommend those two dishes. The dessert was very expensive for what it was and not too special (dulce de leche with some barley cake, which was super tiny). Overall, food experience was great, and some of the dishes were great value for money and some were not. The presentation of the dishes was amazing. The reservation process was odd for us given how touristy the city is, we were in touch through email and they were mainly only replying in Norwegian when we were writing to...

We are a couple who traveled through Norway, Sweden, and Finland for 10 days. We enjoyed exquisite fish in a simple restaurant in a small village on the island of Senja, had a fantastic fiske soup in a campsite restaurant, and cooked delicious salmon in our van.

On the last evening of our trip, we decided to find a more "fancy" restaurant and spend a bit more, hoping to experience the best at your establishment. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

You ruined a fish soup by serving a miserable broth with a lonely piece of fish floating in it. You overwhelmed the delicate taste of king crab with an excessive spread of mayonnaise. The catch of the day was nothing more than a small, uninspiring piece of fish, with no idea of what you were actually serving.

Sorry, but your restaurant is a "no-go" for us. We are going back to the simplicity, the authenticity of your country's traditions, the taste of real food, and the joy of discovering it along the way.

Back to the road, to nature, to adventure where the true essence of this...