Nicolai Ellitsgaard : head chef at Europe’s first and biggest underwater restaurant
- 1 Michelin Star @Under Norway
- Biggest Submarine Restaurant in Europe
- Voted best Seafood in Scandinavia
More 1 Star chefs here. Other Nordics chefs here.
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The 32 year-old Dane will become Head Chef at the new underwater restaurant UNDER, opening in the southern part of Norway opening March 2019.
He has extensive experience working with some of the best restaurants in Scandinavia such as Henne Kirkeby Kro in Denmark and as a former Head Chef at the top Norwegian restaurant Måltid. Nicolai has a great passion for local food and ingredients and can harvest the wild Norwegian nature all by himself. In anticipation of his upcoming opening, Nicolai is experimenting with local ingredients and different compositions so as to serve his guests a dining experience that will be hard to forget.
Danish chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard who runs the underwater restaurant Under in Lindesnes Norway. He has lived in Norway since 2011 and really adapted the Norwegian country and culture. Chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard is a forager, hunter and fisherman on his days of, and even sometimes for work aswell. He loves to bring guests out on field trips before their dinner and to try some of the fresh ingredients in is true element is something that gives a lot of joy to him. He always had a close connection to the sea, growing up in a fishing village in the northern part of Denmark as a child.
Nicolai Ellitsgaard has a high focus on the ocean and to cook with unused species with high quality is something that drives him. Fresh ingredients and pure, naked flavors are of utmost importance to use. At the same time he wants to provide an unique dining experience that ushers his guests beyond their comfort zone. Restaurant Under won in 2021 the food guide for best seafood restaurant (by the Scandinavian guide focusing on sustainable and high quality called “360 Seafood”). The fact is that Nicolai Ellitsgaard do not consider his restaurant a seafood restaurant, he considers more himself as a contributor to the local area in all its produces. For example, meat is used if he knows how the animal has lived and have been treated. Quality and welfare go hand in hand.
In 2020, only 10 months after its opening Under got there first Michelin Star. In 2022 Under was in 50bestdiscovery. The cusine is mostly seafood obviously. One of his signature dishes is a famous dish of Norway called “Fiskepudding” (a kind of Norwegian traditional fishcake that’s bake/steamed). Chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard makes his own version to bring back the fame it deserves, back in the days it was a dish you would serve to weddings. Currently it is more a daily dish that has a bad reputation because of the ones you buy in the supermarkedet are not the best quality. This is what Chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard is busy to change. He is on a mission, to make Fiskepudding great again. He makes his very own version of quality fish and season the dish with aged herring roe and disguise it as a blue mussels since he uses mussels in the sauce, to create the “beard” a mussel is having, Chef uses a seaweed with a simmilare taste of Truffle that he discovered some years ago in Norway. Seaweed is another key element in Ellitsgaards cusine and he use it both for flavoure and technices, like the ice cream sandwiche where sugarkelp has been transformet to give the same feeling as a crispy fatty millefeues with a ice cream of a wild Norwegian herb with same flavour of pineapple in the middle.
