As others have noted, this is a restaurant that is attached to an art gallery. The husband and wife who run the gallery and restaurant are both artists, each have a room devoted to their work in the gallery. You should definitely check out the art, as well as the second floor collection of old Norwegian stiuff and the glass geodesic dome on the third floor.
My wife and I decided to eat at Pilgrim after visiting the gallery the day before and also after deciding we could live without joining the hordes of tour bus tourists who would fill our hotel's massive dining room. This turned out to be a wonderful decision.
We ate outside with a view of the fjord, so that's a good way to start. We each had a refreshing pilsner. We shared some Troll soup, which is a mushroom soup with other vegetables as well. It is a cream based soup, but more brothy than creamy in appearance and taste. The name may be cute, but the soup was seriously one of the best mushroom soups I've ever had. I should mention that we are from Chicago and eat out a lot. We are always on the prowl for authentic cooking using fresh and local ingredients at home and when traveling, and we found just that at Pilgrim.
For her main course my wife had the fish combination. A prosaic name for a really excellent dish. Two beautiful filets, each around 6 ounces. One was a poached salmon, the other a grilled sea trout, which is a salt water fish about the size and consistency of salmon, so don't confuse it with fresh water trout. Her dish was served with steamed potatoes, carrots and cucumbers. I had the reindeer stew. The chef told me it was made with reindeer he gets directly from the Sami people. It is made with three kinds of onions, asparagus, good red wine, and other stuff that all combine to make it absolutely delicious!
Both artist/owners couldn't have been nicer. We concluded with a slice of cake that was very good and left very satisfied.
My guess is that the menu doesn't change much, which is a good thing since everything is so well prepared. Our meal cost 640 Kroner, so that's just under $80 US. Money well spent! All in all a really nice experience. read more