Kim Sjøbakk, Experience

Kim Sjøbakk, head chef at Experience in Steinkjer in Norway, how have you been dealing with the challenging situation during the past years? 

– It hasn’t been easy to run a restaurant during covid. We’ve had to raise our prices, but we try to do as much ourselves to avoid it to some extent. This includes picking berries and other ingredients in the woods. Most of our producers are located nearby and our chef likes to go there to help pick the vegetables. Another thing is that we always take care to use the whole ingredient, be that an animal or a vegetable.

Where do you get your fish from?

– We’ve bought our own fishing boat so we catch most of it ourselves from April until October. Shellfish is bought from local suppliers that fish in the fjord outside the restaurant.

What about food waste from the guests?

– There is virtually none! We always know how many guests we will receive and plan how much to buy according to that. If we have too much of something, it generally gets preserved for later However, if there is a little food waste from the guests plates, it goes into our own compost.