Lobster

Coffee and Caviar

Appears in
Kitchen of Light: New Scandinavian Cooking

By Andreas Viestad

Published 2003

  • About

It is not yet 7 A.M. and still dark when fisherman Terje Bernhardsen arrives at the deserted docks on his curious-looking three-wheel moped. His tiny trailer is full of half-rotten fish, and after a few minutes the cold winter air smells like a bustling fishing port in the tropics. The smell awakens the seagulls, which raise a commotion—a cacophony that is bound to wake up anyone still asleep in the surrounding Norwegian fishing village of Ula.

Bernhardsen is one of the last professional lobster fishermen left in the Oslo fjord, an hour’s drive from the capital. The smelly fish is an unpleasant necessity in his line of work.