“Norway is a country with rich food traditions, sometimes born out of necessity,” he tells me over lunch. For instance, making gravlax (trench salmon) is a way of preserving salmon. Traditionally, the fish was marinated in salt, sugar and pepper in a hole in the ground. These days, fillets are rubbed with salt and stored in a cool place with dill pressed between them. Unlike other European countries, Norway doesn’t have a history of aristocratic and bourgeois classes – those who traditionally have had the money and leisure to develop a culinary culture. With no gastronomic laurels to rest upon, contemporary Norwegian cuisine in-stead blends its unique brand of husmanskost (home cooking) with international influences, fusing southern European preparation and flavours with northern ingredients, much of it from the region’s abundant fisheries. After oil, seafood is the country’s biggest export.

With a population of less than one million, Olso is still the country’s largest city, and its rise as an epicurean hotspot is a recent phenomenon. “It used to be kind of a boring place,” Viestad admits of the city where he was born and raised. But with a robust café culture and a generation of diners who are newly appreciative of global flavours, it has gone through a metamorphosis into culinary maturity. Norwegian chefs have won the Bocuse d’Or (the unofficial world cooking championships) several times, and the country has one of the highest Michelin-star densities among capital cities – one for every 70,000 people.

No wonder: The forests and the sea are only minutes away, making fresh ingredients available in abundance. When the wild mushrooms that carpet the countryside just outside Oslo are in season, Viestad tells me, people make the trek by tram with baskets to haul back their harvest. If the elements of a dish are the best they can be, the inclination is to prepare them simply to preserve their natural flavours. “I think that more people realize that Norwegian food tastes good because it’s simple,” he says. It’s this fresh and charming simplicity that makes Scandinavian cuisine different from the food North American palates are accustomed to, even though the raw materials are similar.

After lunch, we head next door to the plainly named espresso bar, Java, favoured by locals (and the occasional royal). Viestad comes here every day, he says. Sipping on a frothy latte, I can taste why the café’s owner, Robert Thoresen, won the first World Barista Championship in 2000.

After helping me plan the rest of my culinary itinerary, Viestad takes me to a lookout in St. Hanshaugen Park. On this temperate, sunny day we have an unobstructed view of downtown Oslo, with its pastiche of old and new buildings. A gem-toned waterfront and acres of forest frame the city. It might not be as remote and exotic as the Svalbard Archipelago, perhaps, but it’s equally “cool.” 

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