Meet our Culinary Ambassadors
We’re working with two standout chefs to make onboard dining one of the highlights of your voyage. Máret Rávdná Buljo and Halvar Ellingsen bring deep knowledge of local ingredients, food traditions and regional identity to every menu.
There’s a quiet food revolution taking place in Norway. Rather than relying on exotic imports, chefs are looking close to home for inspiration. Local ingredients, local flavors, local stories: the magic is right here on our doorstep.
Halvar and Máret are at the forefront of this shift. Through thoughtful, sustainable cooking, they show how food connects us to people, place and history. Both live and work on the Norwegian coast. And both care deeply about using what’s nearby and what’s in season, and not letting anything go to waste.
After working at a string of high-profile restaurants, Halvar returned home to Vesterålen to open Kvitnes, his ancestral working farm, now one of Norway’s top culinary destinations. Sámi cultural custodian Máret, who got her first reindeer aged three, also runs Boazovázzi, her family’s reindeer farm in Lødingen. Each of them is a strong voice in modern Norwegian food culture – one coastal, one Sámi.
Collaborators from the coast
As part of a new project led by Norway’s Coastal Kitchen Head Chef, Øistein Nilsen, we are excited to partner with both Astrid and Halvar to design a range of new seasonal dishes unique to our onboard restaurants. These will use local ingredients to showcase the rich flavors of each of Norway’s seasons.
Astrid Nässlander
National Chef Prize Winner for Sustainability
Founder of Høst Matverksted, Steigen
“What drives me is the urge to show people what we have around us, and that it’s possible to source food differently than just going to the supermarket. It’s old-fashioned common sense to get milk from a dairy farmer or meat from a moose hunter.
I like to describe my approach to cooking by using the term ‘retrovation’, which means to look back when developing the future. By combining both new and old methods and ingredients, we get an interesting pantry as a starting point for cooking.
I’m very excited and curious to see what we can achieve when a venerable and established brand like The Coastal Express meets my young, ambitious ideas. I’m in it for the local food with sustainable production methods as the foundation.”
Halvar Ellingsen
National Culinary Champion | Head Chef at Kvitnes, Vesterålen
“I lived and cooked in Oslo for ten years before moving back home to cook at Kvitnes, my family’s farm in Vesterålen, six years ago. I wanted to make the ingredients the star of the show again, to prove what sustainable food really is in practice, and how far you can go with it.
As a young boy, I would hear the whistle of The Coastal Express ships just before half past one every day. It was a natural part of growing up on the coast. Even now, we have goods delivered to our restaurant from the ships every single week.
I’m really looking forward to having fun working together, and serving guests dishes that not only taste great but also connects them more to the areas they travel to.”