10 Places Where Locals Love to Eat in Stavanger

Casa Gio is a small, cosy restaurant offering you a genuine Italian experience. The restaurant draws inspiration from many different Italian regions, and focuses on traditional dishes based on high-quality ingredients. Fresh and seasonal produce is sourced from the local area, while cured meats and other store cupboard ingredients are imported from Italy.

As much as possible is prepared by hand in the restaurant's own kitchen, including bread, pasta and desserts. The food is ideally served with Italian wines from niche wine producers. Both culinary expertise and prices are high here. The seasonal menu is highly recommended. Buon appetito!

Gådjå has a couple of decades of experience from Stavanger's restaurant sector with various premises and food festival participations. Ethiopian food is clearly much loved by local residents here, because Gådjå has kept going for about ten years in its current premises.

The restaurant is run by an Ethiopian family who takes great pride in presenting authentic, traditional Ethiopian food culture in a proper way. This means that you get to try spices such as mitmita and berber, awase sauce and the sourdough lefe injera. The food culture is just as suitable for vegans and vegetarians as for carnivores, making it a great place for everyone to try a new culinary experience.

Prawns thrive well in the fjords of South-West Norway, and have always been a popular delicacy among the locals. We like to think of prawns as being a summer food, perfect with a glass of white wine on the terrace at home or straight from the bag on the quayside.

However, connoisseurs believe that prawns thrive best in cold water and are also at their best in winter, as they are harder in the shell and firmer in the flesh. In any case, there's no doubt that freshly cooked fjord prawns are the best you can get, and in Stavanger the long tradition of selling prawns straight from the boat on the quayside is still going. The kilo price is a bit above that of the freezer counter, but then so is the taste.

Hot spices and food made for sharing raise the temperature around the tables at Tako Taquería in more ways than one. The restaurant serves Mexican food, mainly in the form of tacos, in an authentic Mexican way but with certain local twists, often with fish and vegetables that belong more in Jæren than in Jalisco.

Bright, cosy rooms with wooden benches and tables create a nice atmosphere, and the generous portions at reasonable prices make this place a winner. The drinks menu has various tequila and margaritas, and the absence of Mexican beer is offset by local quality beer both on tap and by the bottle.

Fisketorget in the heart of Vågen in the centre of Stavanger is split in two, with a long and well-stocked fish counter down one side, and on the other, a restaurant where the same fish is cooked and served ready to eat. There's definitely no shortage of access to fresh fish and seafood here.

The day's catch is brought straight to your table, in cosy, informal premises. Prawn sandwiches and fish soup are regular, very popular items on the menu, otherwise the offer depends on the season and the chef's inspiration. There are several menus available here, adapted to suit different budgets and appetites, including a lutefisk menu and a shellfish bonanza. Great efforts have also gone into preparing a wine list that complements the food.

"good, honest fare", "lovely, warm atmosphere", "fantastic hosts" - these are just some of the comments about Eg & Du from previous guests. The owners describe themselves as the sort of place they want to go to. This means premises with features like a nice rear courtyard and a varied menu based on local ingredients.

The menu is not very long, but comprehensive enough for everyone to find something they like, whether small or large portions, world-famous or traditional cuisine, high or low-priced. There is often a predominance of fish dishes, but also meat from birds and game. The only downside is the limited vegetarian options. The dessert menu makes the most of access to juicy berries such as mulberries and blackberries.

Bellies offers an enormous range of dishes on its menu, to the extent that surprising compositions and dishes with exotic names almost seem to be a goal in themselves for this restaurant. And there's nothing wrong with that! This restaurant conjures up new dishes depending on whatever is in season and depending on their own culinary intuition, and at the time of writing you can experience exotic elements such as baba ganoush, borscht, gobi daal and n’duja with Old Norse ingredients such as funnel chanterelles and potatoes.

They claim to be passionate about food here, and it's easy to be convinced. Visitors who hesitate to try fermented vegetables or raw Italian cured meats can make do with a pizza from the wood stove.

Tango sets the bar very high when it comes to its cuisine, so high that they might get a whiff of a Michelin star soon. The premises are intimate and elegant without being formal or oppressive. They only offer a set menu, with the encouragement to trust the professionals in the kitchen.

And that's something you can easily do. The ingredients and techniques are many and varied, but the kitchen staff under the leadership of the celebrity chef Kjartan Skjelde, known from MasterChef on TV, have full control and serve a dining experience well above the ordinary.

Fortou is a small outlet associated with the cultural institution Tou, which sells street food with global influences. When the people of Stavanger were asked to vote for the city's best takeaway, it was Fortou who got the most votes, and the queues on the weekends are testament to their popularity.

Well-cooked food and great service combined with a varied and exciting selection is the recipe for success here. Choose from Korean rice dishes, Vietnamese baguettes, Hawaiian sushi bowls or burgers, and feel free to take your food with you to Tou's drinking place ØST. The prices are a pleasant surprise.

Behind Restaurant SÖL are three young but experienced chefs with a penchant for vegetables and local produce, which they serve in stylish rooms with wooden interiors. Meat and fish are not banned, but SÖL clearly states that the focus is on the best vegetables they can get at any time. And this is by no means a small amount, considering the proximity to some of Norway's most important agricultural areas.

The menu is very short, and clearly inspired by new Nordic cuisine, and the quality exceeds the price level, which is always a bonus. Naturally, they bake their own delicious bread, and many of the drinks are also based on local ingredients and are self-produced, including the house's own kombucha with apple and lemonade with elderflower.