DFDS in the hunt for a Michelin star

Mostly known for its lavish family buffets, the ‘Oslo boat’ is looking to go way uptown

DFDS Seaways has just opened some new gourmet restaurants on its route between Copenhagen and Oslo.

Restaurant Sjø is the name of the latest restaurant concept DFDS has launched on its two ships, Crown and Pearl, which sail the daily route both ways between Copenhagen and Oslo. The ambition of the new concept is to offer Michelin quality onboard.

Former Noma chef Søren Westh has been brought onboard to help kick off the project and advise DFDS on ways they can reach the rarified Michelin stratosphere. He worked at Noma for eight years, did a turn at the three-star Michelin Restaurant Per Se in New York and a season in Barcelona at the three-star Michelin restaurant El Bulli.

Christian Mortensen, formerly of the Michelin-starred Kul in Kødbyen and the Paul in Tivoli, has been hired as the new head chef of Restaurant Sjø.

Scandinavian haute cuisine on the high seas
Westh and Mortensen have created menus in the restaurants aimed at offering passengers an extraordinary, locally-sourced culinary experience.

The restaurants offer four, five and seven-course menus available from a total of 12 options listed on the seasonally-inspired menu.

The seven-course menu comes with wine pairings and costs 1,500 kroner. It is designed to reflect the journey, and the waiters are trained to present the story behind each dish and its ingredients.

Most of the ingredients for the dishes come from Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

“It’s a very ambitious project,” said Kevin Thyge Helsinghof, the global sales director for passenger sales at DFDS. “Landing a Michelin star for Restaurant Sjø could be as much as ten years in the future, but we want to offer high-level Scandinavian cuisine on our ships now.”

An alternative to the smorgasbord
Helsinghof said that about 44 percent of the 777,000 passengers sailing the route last year opted for the buffet offered at the Seven Seas Restaurant on both ships.

The Restaurant Sjø locations on Crown and Pearl each seat around 50 guests and will replace the former gourmet restaurant Marco Polo.

The company has created a series of short videos (in Danish with English subtitles) about the creation of the Restaurant Sjø concept. One episode can be viewed at the end of this article.

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