We had done our research before landing in the Faroe Islands. We knew about the wind, the tunnels, the puffins. What we had not prepared for was how seriously the Faroese take their food. This is a nation of 55,000 people in the middle of the North Atlantic, with an agricultural history built on what the islands could sustain — sheep, seabirds, fish, root vegetables, and not much else. That constraint has produced a food culture that is genuinely unlike anywhere else we’ve eaten across 25 countries.

Faroese food is not Instagram-elaborate. It is honest, flavour-forward, and deeply tied to the place. If you go looking for the cuisine you’d find in Copenhagen or Helsinki, you’ll miss it entirely. But if you follow the right cues — a hand-painted sign outside a shed, a butcher’s counter in a village harbour, a restaurant with no printed menu — you will eat some of the most memorable meals of your trip.

The foundations of Faroese food culture — why it tastes like nowhere else

The Faroe Islands sit roughly halfway between Norway and Iceland, battered by North Atlantic weather and largely cut off from mainland Europe for most of their history. Until fairly recently, the islands had no fruit trees, no arable land for cereal crops, and no roads connecting most settlements. What they had in abundance was sheep, seabirds, fish, and a pressing need to preserve food across long winters.

Fermentation, wind-drying, and the hjallur

The traditional Faroese preservation method is not salt-curing or smoking — it is ræsting, a wind-driven semi-fermentation that uses the islands’ constant Atlantic breeze. Meat and fish are hung in a hjallur — a slatted wooden shed designed to let air circulate while keeping out rain — and left for weeks or months. The result is intense, complex, and polarising. Visitors from mainland Scandinavia often describe the smell as challenging. Locals regard it as simply what food should taste like.

The sheep and the sea

There are roughly twice as many sheep as people on the Faroe Islands. Faroese lamb is among the best we’ve eaten anywhere — the animals graze on mountain grasses and salt-sea air, and the flavour is noticeably more complex than mainland lamb. Combined with Atlantic fish that is often still alive when the boat comes in, the raw materials here are exceptional. The cuisine does not need to do much to them.

The dishes you must try — and what they actually taste like

We are not going to describe these dishes the way a food magazine would. We are going to tell you what they actually tasted like when we tried them.

Skerpikjøt — wind-dried mutton

Skerpikjøt is the most famous Faroese food and also the most misunderstood. It is mutton that has been hung in a hjallur for five to nine months, sometimes longer, until it is almost entirely dry and the surface is a deep burgundy-brown. The texture is chewy and fibrous — not unlike a very good jerky — and the flavour starts with something close to aged cheese before finishing with clean mutton. There is an intensity here that rewards slow eating. We ate it sliced thin on rye bread with butter and it was genuinely excellent. If you eat only one Faroese thing, let it be this.

Ræst kjøt — fermented lamb

Where skerpikjøt is dry and firm, ræst kjøt is softer, moister, and considerably more pungent. The fermentation goes further, producing a flavour that has been compared (unfairly, we think) to rotting. We’d describe it as aged lamb with a sharp, funky edge — closer to a strong washed-rind cheese than to anything in the off-putting direction. It is served boiled, often with potatoes and root vegetables, and the smell in the restaurant is unmistakable. Not for everyone. We both ate it twice.

Ræst fiskur — fermented fish

The fish equivalent of ræst kjøt — white fish, typically haddock or cod, hung in the hjallur until partly fermented. It is boiled and served with potatoes and melted butter. The flavour is milder than fermented lamb — more savoury than funky — and very filling. This is traditional Faroese comfort food. We had it for lunch in a small village south of Tórshavn and it felt exactly right for the weather that day.

Harðfiskur — dried fish

If fermented fish sounds too adventurous, start here. Harðfiskur is simply dried fish — usually haddock — pressed flat and air-dried without fermentation. The texture is brittle and papery, the flavour is clean and intensely savoury. It is sold in every supermarket and petrol station. Eat it as a snack with butter. This is the Faroese equivalent of Finnish licorice or Norwegian brown cheese — the thing people eat constantly and visitors are confused by at first.

Lamb soup — kjøtsúpan

One of the most common dishes in Faroese homes and restaurant lunch menus: a clear broth built on lamb bones, with turnip, carrot, potato, and tender pieces of meat. Deeply restorative in the Atlantic cold and a good introduction to Faroese flavour without any of the fermented intensity. We found it in several places across the islands and it was excellent every time.

Quick-reference food list: 8 things to eat in the Faroe Islands

• Skerpikjøt — wind-dried mutton, the most iconic Faroese food. Try it on rye bread with butter.
• Harðfiskur — dried fish, sold everywhere, excellent as a snack. No fermentation, no drama.
• Ræst fiskur — fermented boiled fish with potatoes. Mild, filling, traditional.
• Kjøtsúpan — lamb soup. Order it for lunch on a cold day. It will make everything better.
• Fresh Atlantic cod or haddock — the fish here is exceptional. Anything pan-fried or grilled, landed that morning, will be among the best fish you have eaten.
• Faroese lamb chops — grilled, simply seasoned. The terroir of the islands comes through in the flavour in a way that mainland lamb rarely matches.
• Rhubarb desserts — one of the few plants that grows easily on the islands. Rhubarb crumble, jam, and compote appear frequently in Tórshavn cafés and restaurants.
• Local craft beer — Föroya Bjór (Faroese Beer) produces solid lagers and ales. The flagship pale lager is served everywhere and pairs well with everything on this list.

Where to eat in Tórshavn — the honest restaurant guide

Tórshavn has a restaurant scene that is disproportionately impressive for a capital of 22,000 people. A handful of restaurants are doing genuinely excellent work with local ingredients. Prices are high — roughly Reykjavik-level — and booking ahead for dinner is essential in summer. Here is what we found useful.

Tips and warnings for eating in Tórshavn

• Book dinner at least 2–3 days ahead in summer. The best restaurants (KOKS, Ræst, Barbara Fish House) fill up fast. Walk-ins at lunch are generally easier.
• KOKS is the headline name — a two-Michelin-star restaurant that closed its original Leynavatn location and now operates as a pop-up tasting menu concept. If it is running when you visit, it represents one of the finest expressions of North Atlantic cuisine in the world. Check their schedule before you arrive.
• Ræst restaurant in Tórshavn is the best everyday option for traditional fermented Faroese food in a sit-down setting. Knowledgeable staff, well-prepared classics, a menu that rotates with availability.
• Barbara Fish House is excellent for those who want fresh Atlantic fish without the fermented element — pan-fried, grilled, and cured preparations, excellent wine list, beautiful old harbour-side room.
• Lunch is better value than dinner everywhere. The same restaurants that charge €40+ for dinner mains often do lunch menus for €18–25. We ate most of our sit-down meals at lunch and saved the evening budgets for wine and harðfiskur in the room.
• The harbour market (Havnar Marknaður) on Saturday mornings is worth a visit for cheese, local honey, rhubarb jam, and occasionally fresh fish. It is small but genuine.
• Café Natúr in the old town is reliable for soups, sandwiches, and kjøtsúpan at non-tourist prices. The kind of place locals actually eat. Go for lunch.

Eating outside Tórshavn — village food and roadside finds

Some of our best food experiences on the islands happened nowhere near a restaurant. The Faroe Islands reward slow driving and attention to hand-painted signs.

What to look for outside the capital

• Village kiosks and petrol stations sell harðfiskur and rye bread — not as a tourist product but as everyday food. The BP station in Klaksvík had better dried fish than some of the specialty shops in Tórshavn.
• Lamb from roadside farms. We saw at least three handwritten signs for fresh lamb in the week we drove the islands. We bought a packet of chops from a farm in Eiði and cooked them in our accommodation that evening. The quality was exceptional.
• The fish sheds near harbours in Klaksvík, Vestmanna, and Tvøroyri often have fresh fish available in the mornings, sold direct by the fishing families. It requires some persistence to find, but the results are worth it.
• Supermarkets (Miklagarður and SMS in Tórshavn, local shops elsewhere) carry a full range of Faroese products including packaged skerpikjøt, harðfiskur, local cheese, and Föroya Bjór. Self-catering for some meals is a practical way to keep costs manageable.
• The Gjógv village café near the famous gorge harbour is tiny, does not always have consistent hours, but is run by a local family and serves lamb soup and open sandwiches that were among the most memorable meals of our trip — partly because of the food, partly because of the view from the window.

What we got wrong about Faroese food before we arrived

We had done research. We still arrived with misconceptions. These are the ones worth correcting.

• We thought fermented food would be unpleasant. Ræst kjøt has a serious smell that hits you when you walk into a restaurant serving it. What we hadn’t prepared for was how good it tastes once you commit to eating it. The flavour reward is real. The smell is the price of entry.
• We assumed the restaurant scene would be limited. Tórshavn has a better restaurant-per-capita ratio than many European cities twice its size. KOKS alone would justify a trip to the islands for serious food travelers. We underestimated this entirely.
• We brought too many snacks from the ferry. Everything we needed was available on the islands, including plenty of familiar European products in the supermarkets. You do not need to overpack food provisions.
• We thought seabird dishes would still be on menus. Puffin (lundi) is a traditional Faroese food, but it is now rare on restaurant menus due to declining puffin populations. If you encounter it, the serving is controversial and we chose not to eat it. Guillemot and other seabird preparations occasionally appear on traditional menus but are not something to count on finding.
• We underestimated how good the lamb was. We had eaten good lamb in Iceland and in Scotland. Faroese lamb is different — more mineral, cleaner-finishing, with a character that reads almost like wild game. It was a genuine surprise and we ate it at every opportunity after the first time.
• We didn’t know about rhubarb. The Faroese grow rhubarb everywhere — it thrives in the damp Atlantic climate — and it appears in jams, crumbles, and desserts throughout the islands. We bought three jars of rhubarb jam to bring home.

Frequently asked questions

A final word from Rovaniemi

We live in Finnish Lapland, which has its own deep tradition of cold-climate food — reindeer, dried pike, cloudberries, the kind of eating that is shaped entirely by what survives winter. When we arrived in the Faroe Islands, we recognised something similar: a cuisine built by necessity, refined by centuries of doing it over and over, and now being rediscovered by the rest of the world partly through restaurants like KOKS and partly through a broader curiosity about what North Atlantic food actually is.

Faroese food will not suit everyone. It requires some curiosity and, at points, a willingness to push past an unfamiliar smell. But for travelers who approach it honestly — who try the skerpikjøt, who sit down with a bowl of lamb soup on a cold afternoon, who buy harðfiskur from a petrol station and eat it on a hillside — it rewards that curiosity with something genuinely unlike anything else.

We left with three jars of rhubarb jam, a packet of skerpikjøt that didn’t survive the flight home intact (the bag leaked — plan accordingly), and a strong intention to come back. The food alone is a reason to return.