Growing up in Spain, Alberto Lozano always found a sense of calm in the kitchen. He was a hyperactive kid, so his mom put him to work mixing cake batter or making meatballs. “The mess and the craziness of the kitchen calmed me down,” he recalls, speaking to Observer in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, a small town far above the Arctic Circle. Svalbard embraces a Scandi charm and aesthetic thanks to being part of the Kingdom of Norway, but life here can be challenging during the cold winters and long polar nights. The isolated destination is one of the world’s northernmost towns and home to just about 2,400 residents, as well as the occasional polar bear.
It’s a far cry from Lozano’s home country, but his upbringing is still what drives him. “Whatever my mom was doing was my first experience in the kitchen,” he says. “And it turned me into the chef that I am today.”
These days, Lozano fully embraces that kitchen craziness at the helm of Huset, a fine dining restaurant built in Longyearbyen’s former town hall. It was acquired by Hurtigruten Svalbard a few years ago, and the company hired Lozano, then working in France, to come in and refine the restaurant, which caters to locals and visitors alike. Lozano incorporates some Spanish influence into the innovative 16-course menu, but primarily draws his inspiration from the Arctic itself. The dishes include reindeer in various forms, including a chorizo, and even seal, served in small, cleverly-presented bites. Many of the ingredients come from Svalbard itself, a remote place very few people have visited due to the distance and cost of travel, not to mention the adventurous spirit needed to survive the long winter.
“When you come here, you’re going to better understand the Arctic,” Lozano explains. “We’re going to show you what we do here. We’re going to explain the methods and the ideas and where they are coming from.”
Although Huset is located at 78 degrees north, it has welcomed some notable guests, including Tom Cruise and the crew of the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two. The actor originally came by Huset to see the old film projector housed in one of the upstairs rooms, but eventually booked in for dinner. “We have a private dining room and a wine cellar with a table, but he ate in the dining room with everyone else and was very humble,” Lozano says. “But we have a lot of important people who come here, either politicians or documentarians. The Global Seed Bank is here, so there are a lot of important people coming to Svalbard.”
Lozano speaks with Observer about building a menu from scratch in the Arctic, using local ingredients and his hopes for Huset’s future.
Observer: How did you end up in Svalbard?
Alberto Lozano: I’ve been answering this question a lot, but I always think about it because there’s always something to reflect on again. Obviously, my life map drew me here. [Before this] I was in the Alps for 10 years. I really enjoy the winter and the roughness of cold and snow. So that part also drove me here because I understood that the cold is what I love. The other part was the project. The project is very ambitious. After the offer, everything made sense in my head, and [my wife and I] decided to give it a go. We’ve been here more than two years. And I like it more and more.
What do you like about it?
A lot of things. On the activities side, Svalbard offers a lot of things if you can see them. You really need to push to find them. Winter is very extreme. But I have a very good friend doing expeditions, so we take a snowmobile and sleep outside and come back three days later feeling more alive than ever. Summer offers a lot of foraging. We collect mushrooms. This week we picked mountain sorrel, which is a plant that grows here on the island, and we have a license to pick it. You can take a boat to see the whales. There are so many hikes around that are so beautiful. Everything happens so fast. As a hyperactive person, it’s my perfect place.
Obviously, to cook here has been a challenge, and I say that in a good way because I had lost the confidence that I had the previous year. Wherever I went, I had more or less the same kitchen and the same produce. If something got broken it could get fixed. Here, everything is challenging. I say I lost confidence in a good way because I started to be like a kid again when I started in the kitchen. I got new proteins and got deeper into preservation methods. You have to go back to the cowboy days when something is broken and you know no one will come to fix it. All of these things together are why I loved Svalbard.
So in Svalbard, you need a special license in order to forage for ingredients?
Yeah, we have to ask yearly. The place is very strict, and I agree that we need to take care of it. So everything we want to collect, we need to check if we need to ask for a license. For mushrooms, it’s okay, for instance, but for mountain sorrel we need the license. We need to say how many kilos we’re going to take. We need to take it in a certain way. Same for seaweed. Everything is very well controlled. We’re not allowed to take flowers at any point. I have a license to get two meters square of moss, but I need to give exact coordinates of where I’m going to take it and to mark it. But I do like that because it comes as part of the storytelling. We can be ambassadors of how we try to take care of the place.
What was here when you arrived?
The company behind us [Hurtigruten Svalbard] took over [Huset] two and a half years ago. That’s when I started. So, there was a kitchen. There was a menu run by an old chef from the former company who stayed with us. He stayed for a little while with that menu until I came. But when I came, I turned everything upside down. They were doing around five or six dishes [for the tasting menu]. Now we are up to 16, and my signature is on every dish. But I’ve tried to respect the building and respect Svalbard.
Do you have a big focus on sustainability?
I was part of a food conference not long ago, and everyone was smiling like, “What is sustainability? My grandmother has been doing that her whole life.” And now it’s trendy. I think my kitchen has been driven in that way since I started. To use the whole plant or animal is a must in Spain and it has always been. I prefer to think we do the right thing with the food. But also here, the garbage has to travel [to Norway], so that gets me thinking even more about what I can use. For instance, we serve food in bones. I make stock with the bones and now we are also serving a dish on top of them. I don’t have to buy a plate for it. With all the paper in the kitchen, we create a paste that we can add to the soil of the plants we grow here. A good friend of mine, Ola Klepp, a Michelin-starred chef from Norway, suggested it.
How much research did you have to do on Nordic cuisine when creating the menu?
I had two or three months just to experience the island and to understand things when I arrived. It was nice to have this handbrake when I arrived and to get to know the place. I did a lot of studying. I didn’t know much about the proteins from here, although there are similarities. Ptarmigan is a bird I’d been cooking in Spain, so I could play with that. But of course, seal and Svalbard reindeer were new. Same with wolffish. There were a lot of things I had never touched. Same with the preservation methods. I had used some, but here, they are a must. I had to open some books.
Where do you get the meat and fish?
We don’t get 100 percent of our proteins from Svalbard, but our limit is the Arctic. We have our own fishermen for cod and wolffish. Another good friend is fishing shrimp. We have several hunters we worked with because we need a lot for the whole year, and everything comes in the same epic month, around October and November. We receive 40 reindeer. We receive 400 or 500 hundred ptarmigan. We receive 1,000 kilos of cod. Everything happens in a pretty short span of time.
And then you preserve it?
Yeah. I get it all pretty much all at once. We do get some cod over the year. And there is some good sea urchin in Norway.
What about seal?
I know it can be a bit controversial. We have a lot of seal here, so there is no limit for hunting seal for food here. The bad perception of it comes from the ‘90s when they were hunted just for the skin. But we don’t do that. We have very selective hunters, and they are very careful and only go to get one seal without disturbing the others. They bring me the meat, and the skin and blubber is used for the huskies as food. Here, everything is protected and everything makes sense. It’s funny to say, but I think of seal as the pig of the Arctic. It is an animal with a lot of fat. We use two or three over the year. Even if we weren’t here, they would hunt seal for themselves and for the dogs, so I think the cycle is very well-defined and I’m proud to be cooking this Arctic protein.
If you need olive oil or a certain spice, how do you get those?
I try to use less. There are a few things we do use, like paprika. There is a chorizo that we make, and the Spanish paprika is very important, and I bring it in my suitcase when I go to Spain. I try to bring dry products. But I do not want protein from somewhere else. I would never use butter in a Spanish kitchen, but here I do because I can’t bring all the olive oil I wish to use. I’m using seed oil. I’m using Røros butter, which is a very famous butter in Norway. I don’t say that everything we do is zero kilometer, because there are things that don’t grow here. I can’t buy lemons from Norway, for example. But I’m very proud of what we use. We don’t take the easiest way out, which is to order. We say, “What can we do with what we have?”
Do people come to the restaurant all year?
Yes, although, of course, there are seasons. From January to June, it is the high season. It’s expeditions in the winter. In summer, we have a slower June because it is very slushy with some snow, but July, August and September are very good, with a lot of options on the island. And October and November are hunting season, but it’s a lower season in November and December. And that’s okay because we have a lot to do, like preservation.
Would it be possible for Huset to get a Michelin star, being in Svalbard?
Oh my God, I hope yes. We are working for that, obviously. I work for myself and for my chefs’ happiness and my guests’ happiness, because if the other chefs are happy, you will feel it. But yes, it’s a wish. We are working hard. And let’s see what happens. I think and hope that Svalbard is part of Norway [for Michelin], and we can have them come try it out. It would be the most northern Michelin star in the world. But we are still humble. We have our feet on the floor.
Are there any other restaurants in Scandinavia you’ve been inspired by?
Restaurant K2 from Stavanger [in Norway]. I met the chef, Ola Klepp, at a food conference in Tenerife about food and climate change. It was a very interesting food conference. My profile is not the profile of a typical head chef in Norway, and in these fine dining places, it will always be a little more challenging for me. But when I met him, I realized I was not alone. He’s a super nice guy, and we share the same philosophy. We had a few lovely days together, and we couldn’t stop talking about what we do. He’s younger than me, but he’s like my little hero in Norway.
Where else do you recommend eating in Svalbard?
I like Funken. It’s a very nice menu. There’s a very nice champagne collection, and the views are fantastic. It’s a good place for me to hang out when I’m not working. And I always say that you should not come just to Huset. You should come to Svalbard. Don’t get on a flight just to eat here. Enjoy the island. Be an ambassador of the possible change we can all participate in. Come here to understand how beautiful it is and how fast the ice is melting. Don’t come on a plane just to eat with us—come to see everything. That’s my wish.
