by David Gilmour
Restaurant PAZ of Tórshavn, South Streymoy, Faroe Islands
by David Gilmour (10/6/2025)
Foods for the Mind and Heart
“…walking long roads, seeking only one thing—transformation… .”*
As a writer who likes to wing it, I am always happy to have a period of leisure to do some writing, especially when expressing my thoughts to people other than myself. And so it happened that I was corresponding with my English cousin about an upcoming vacation to the Northern Hemisphere. She had a few funny concerns, one of which was her openly questioning whether I had the ‘right’ attitude to actually enjoy myself. She also had some opinions about my thoughts while I was on vacation, which made me wonder why I thought at all. Why not just go and enjoy the experience for once? Just dream through the day, stroll about, visit a museum perhaps, do anything but think, or at least not overthink, the details. To my great surprise, it worked. For six weeks I allowed observations and experiences to filter through my senses as though I were a Native American Indian living by instinct and experience in the woods or on the prairies, in the fascination of the sensuous.
My first stop was Reykjavik, a wholly urban experience. I wandered the streets from its downtown splendor to the city’s outer limits where electric green patches contrasted with volcanic mountains, often with a shawl of geothermal fog around their shoulders. The capital of Iceland attracts many tourists, and as one of the many people struggling to find a spare seat for coffee, I couldn’t deny being a tourist myself. It was a “Bank Holiday” and people flooded into Reykjavik’s colorful streets, especially the merch markets and fast-food drags. Around eleven-thirty I tested my luck and hastily ducked into a restaurant, knowing they officially opened at noon. While I brushed rain off my jacket, I was told in no uncertain terms: “It is only groups lunches today.” Unfazed, I noticed bar seats by the register. A waiter standing nearby asked me if I would like something to drink. “Any non-alcoholic beer?” “Sure,” he said, “but you’ll have to drink it here at the bar.” A bar seat, a beer, perfect! There were two other people at the bar drinking coffee, Aussies it turns out, from a far Southwestern Australian town called Denmark (pop. 6,000). They had a very distinguished cultural narrative of their home. The conversation was entertaining. Always a bit too curious, I came away informed.
This was David Gilmour having a damned good time. It’s actually hard to write about having a damned good time. It was less hard being content, however, now that I was no longer overthinking but letting my curiosity guide me. This was all new to me, navigating the streets alone in a dream-like state. In part, because my wife Susan, who died recently, was my helpful vacation companion. She always knew the most exciting things to do. Visiting the North Atlantic islands was the vacation of a lifetime – our lifetime. So going it alone offered a very different awareness of events than when we did such things together. The last time I had travelled solo was about 40 years ago, in Greece and Turkey, but that was less vacation than it was a research sabbatical. I was an academic on a mission to visit and study ancient ruins. Here, in 2025, my sole purpose was to experience and roam; “to grow up” self-dependent after an exciting life of mutual, shared dependencies.
After two weeks in Reykjavik, I continued my adventure to the Faroe Islands where I felt particularly at home. I had no trouble lying in bed all morning in Tórshavn, especially when it was overcast or raining, as it often was, a little inclemency every day. Occasionally, a wee bit of sunshine squinted through white puffy clouds. Often I breakfasted late waiting for the rain to slack off. Even summer weather in the Faroe Islands means every type of weather imaginable. The amazing sky was an augur’s dream, full of uncertainty. Spending days taking long walks, I stuffed my light rain jacket in my bookbag everywhere I went. The soaking drizzle, however, inevitably gave way to warmish air that soon dried out my damp clothes.
One day I asked my Tórshavn Airbnb host, Torben Nielsen, if he wished to dine with me at PAZ. He worked in the capacity of a modern IT and AI technologist in his own company. Just the right man for the moment; however, there was only one catch: he had to secure a last-minute reservation. No easy task since this 2-Star Michelin restaurant is a famous fine dining destination. Luckily, Torben managed to bag the last two seats at the communal table. PAZ, synonym for “Peace,” is actually so named from the initials of local creative culinary maestro Chef Poul Andrias Ziska. The former head chef of the 2-Star KOKS, whose remoteness and unique artistry of courses and pairings earned it the headline “KOKS, The World’s Most Remote Foodie Destination” reviewed in The New Yorker magazine (June 11, 2018). Alas, KOKS, like so many great restaurants, closed during Covid. After its closing, Chef Ziska spent time in Greenland and then, in 2025, opened his own Faroe Island restaurant on the street level in a modest-looking hotel. His exceptional cuisine was immediately recognized again, and PAZ soon earned a 2-Star Michelin rating.
To call a meal at PAZ anything but an ‘adventure’ would be doing it a grave disservice. We arrived promptly at 5:30 pm, Torben, dressed in a fine multicolored shirt under a dark blazer and I, living from a tourist carry bag, a long-sleeved T-shirt and sky-blue rain jacket, which I carried or wore constantly. The other diners were dressed to the hilt, spiffed up for some grand reception. The chef and his staff were lined up to greet in Downton Abbey fashion. A crew of sous-chefs were busy preparing dishes, standing over ceramic bowls on sturdy tables in the large kitchen area. We were graciously shown to our communal table, the last two seats at a long table for eight.
“The Eight” were three Canadians, two Danish vacationers, Torben and me, which in fact is only seven because a diner didn’t show up. Gunhild, wife of Dane Peter, was a medical general practitioner in Denmark, though born and brought up in the Faroes. The Canadians, Jeanne, a city attorney, and Craig, a high-school teacher, hailed from Vancouver B.C., and Clark, a young, corporate financial accountant from Ottawa, Quebec. Torben was the Faroese local and I the Yank, long retired and very happy, elated to have a seat at the table. The seating at a long table split us into four and three for not-so-easy communal audibility, but we leaned in and shared toasts; we became a lively, talkative company, especially after the champagne.
The reason everyone’s names still roll off my tongue is that we shared the dining table for a five-hour culinary exhibition. During the hours together, speaking between wines and courses, we discussed all manner of subjects, laughed together and really gelled cordially. We loosened up so much we felt free to suggest sampling one another’s wines and non-alcoholic pairings. The alcoholic bibbers were naturally first to loosen up. [When the drinks are called pairings, as you probably know, they are quite special bottles, unusual wines and special vintners, beverages that cost the earth.] My non-alcoholic pairings were approximately US$200, and my host’s alcoholic fine wines were US$300. (Tells you something.) Eleven courses, mind you, and twelve different wines to go with PAZ’s dishes of rare foods, each one carefully described and explained by the sommeliers. Naturally, we got to know them as well. One was a young man of some experience abroad, the other a charming Faroese young woman, beautiful and natural in both manners and speech.
The delectable courses were served in varicolored glazed ceramic bowls, arranged as designed morsels of decorative sea creatures, scaled fishes, sea fowl and fermented, cured fish and lamb. Before serving, many of these elaborate selections are exhibited to us live on ice. Sea urchin, black baseball-size horse-mussels, almond-shaped blue mussels, scallops, limpets, clams, sea snails, large langoustine (skinny red lobsters like stick insects, a foot long and all legs a-fiddling like an agitated spider, antennas flicking about). On ice but not alive are Russian caviar, red fish roe, a seabird called Fulmar, a gray flatfish skate, a cod, whose large fist-sized, bulged-eyed head poked out of the crushed ice, a leg of dried lamb “cured” or fermented naturally in air (crusted with blue and green mold), and a fish also cured in the same process called “Raest”. Samples of both hung on hooks on the wall.
One dessert was chervil, rhubarb and burnt cream, with a thin floral line of coffee traced around the edge. The other was composed of a large de-seeded blackberry floating on a caramel flan moat with encrusted icy-glazed kelp-sugar on top. Various truffle jams, browned butter, and mushroom pâtés arrived alongside the meat and fish courses, and two dinner Rye-bread rolls looking like giant, black-grain-encrusted Brazil nuts rested in a bed of grains. Most of these dishes were served in small bowls of no more than three-to-four-inch diameter pottery, which we learned were specially thrown for the restaurant. Some of the meats came on a small plates, razor-thin cuts of the dry salt-air cured lamb, an inch square, with some mushroom paté and a few watercress leaves placed on top. A point to be made is that all these dishes represent Faroe Island cuisine, by Chef’s choice, naturally and freshly prepared in the kitchen. Perhaps the caviar is excepted, packed in a round tin.
The specialty wines, poured at three fingers, were designed for three-to-four-sip tastings. Non-alcoholic pourings were more generous. Fine sense-tasting it was, an exhibition of cuisine talents, not in any form “dining” as one thinks of having a dinner meal on a big plate. This was a culinary art experience for the senses from the first dish: scallop and caviar in a 1-inch dark green, floral baked shell or cup of hazelnut in the shape of an open calyx, its top decorated with a yellow-centered purple violet and some green herbal shoots. A flower design set in a very tiny, fluted hazelnut planter. One careful pop in the mouth on a tiny fork, savored with utmost concern, the palate and tongue seeking the flavors, but softened smoothly and soon gone. Overture, appetizer, aperitivo, tapas, hors d’oeuvres, starters, firsts, first bloom.
The aesthetic of the whole set was akin to a Japanese tea ritual. Single mouthful delectables unusual in taste — unusual because few of us had ever eaten such food, tasty because each dish was a unique creative concoction of intuitive choices by the chef’s experimenting by imagination, patient practice of combined ingredients and through his sampling tastes of experimental sauces, herbs and spices. The largest bites were the langoustine flakes (two or three bites) and the skate fillet with a long-marinated, pulverized limpet-shell topping. A sweet of dulse was served in a limpet shell, set in natural form, face down on a sea stone. The flan dessert was about five petite dessert spoons of heavenly caramel and butterscotch flavors with the seedless purple blackberry to boot. A welcome surprise was the accompanying doppio of beautiful suede-colored, crème-headed espresso. My gods, it went down well after the toffee-flavored flan with the blue-black berry gem floating in the ochre pond.
An incident of synchronicity: one conversation: Jeanne, a bold and confident Canadian, a head prosecutor for the Canadian City of Vancouver. Upon entrance, she pretended to reorganize the seating of our long narrow table, and then, in humorous resignation, flapped her hands down: “Oh, forget it! Sit where you’d like.” Ha,ha.
We spoke of seabirds, and I asked if anyone had seen the stuffed Great Auk in the Faroes’ museum, House of Collections, a giant bird hunted to extinction for its plentiful supply of meat. No Great Auk has been sighted since 1844, not in the Orkneys, the Faroes, nor in Iceland. In the moment, Jeanne remembered a childhood story her mother had read to her featuring a Great Auk. Speaking up, I, too, mentioned the story I knew by the British children’s author Enid Blyton. One of the books in “The Five” series featured a group of teenagers searching the Orkneys after a purported sighting of a surviving Great Auk. Jeanne’s jaw dropped: this was precisely the book her mother had read to her. For nearly half a century she had not given Enid Blyton’s story a conscious thought. We high-fived over that coincidence.
Jeanne thought it a minor miracle that we had both read the same book and now clearly remembered it, bringing it out of the cobwebs of memory on the auspicious evening at the PAZ. At 81, and being quite social, I have discovered in conversations that synchronicities of this kind occur with ever greater frequency. But let a miracle have its moment. We toasted our wines, sampled one another’s pairings, and got on very well like long lost friends. Periodically, I would look at Jeanne, and she would shake her head in disbelief over the simultaneity of the Blyton story. Preparing to leave, she said a very fond goodnight at 11:00 pm as we strolled to retrieve our raincoats.
Torben and I walked home in the misty air, quite satisfied that we had enjoyed an unusual gustatory and vinicultural evening. In the diminutive Faroes, who could have imagined such a restaurant and delights from such a young, seasoned chef?
My wanting to eat at PAZ was no accident. I had motivation enough. I was tipped off by my son, Andrew, who in turn was tipped off by his close friend in the Netherlands, a writer named John Weich, who enthusiastically shared The New Yorker essay about KOKS when he heard I was travelling to the Faroes. As a longtime magazine editor for, amongst others, the English glossy Wallpaper*, John has traveled the world many times over and had a keen eye for unusual restaurants and destinations; those hard-to-find, out-of-the-way resorts and points of interest. John thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enjoy this extraordinary outlying fine restaurant while there. Andrew, trusting John’s judgement, was more pointed still: he said he might disown me if I didn’t go. I’m glad I listened. The meal was something very extraordinary, out of this world, even. It will not likely be forgotten, ever.
Afterword: Footnote to Torben:
Torben, the above description of PAZ has been sitting on my computer for several days as I relived the courses and foods, creative tastes, unusual ingredients and special flavors of the sauces and gravies, and the number of taste/sense servings of wine you and I savored. It was less a meal than an orchestration we experienced, compositions of several designers with little “canvas” dishes, applying and setting the delicate morsels of tastes and colors. In its way, we had to reach for color tastes to add a dimension to a bite or a slice of some exotic sea creature, blossom, or fruit. The senses were awakened to moments of appearances and tastes, and not a drop or morsel was to remain in the bowl or the glass.
Color was integral to several dishes. The floral design of the first little cup of caviar and scallop, with a natural violet flower on the top, a beautiful effect for imagining the purple taste of such a flower. It was a cultural and sociological recreation and an artistic appreciation of a rare sensory experience. The term “dining” obviously doesn’t really do it justice; it is not a meal of physical nourishment, where you let the body’s unconscious wizard work instinctively to aid alimentary benefits. It is sensorial and cerebral consciousness-raising in the assessment of its experiential values.
So, the benefits? It was poetic play with craft and art of combined tastes of raw and cooked natural creatures; it was aesthetic excitement, appealing to many senses, but especially the visual composition of edible shapes in the picture frame of a ceramic bowl. I will never forget the vivid color of the de-seeded purple-blue blackberry served in an icy sugar pond of caramel flan or butterscotch crème-brouillet. A few careful spoonsful of the dessert to clean the bowl, and a smooth espresso comes back to mind. Even a taste of Whiskey Chocolate in the shape of a sea pebble. But the Carmel colored, suede-foam crème on the sea of dark chocolate brown coffee— Ummh!—pinkie out on this taste test.
Torben, you and I sensed the creative flair as much as the delicate food fare to be a main part of the experience. We were, in turn, taste-testing for a master chef his new, unique food combinations, which he and his trusting collaborators tested or tasted perhaps to suggest, “Very good color and flavor!” Or to question: “What does it need? Anyone have a suggestion?” We were entertained by culinary artists, under the direction of Chef Poul Andreas Zaski, each seeking compliments for providing delectable creations to impress us. To make up for our tempered complimentary approval of the experience, the establishment has secured its august standing among the world’s restaurants and covered the overhead many times over, a good sign for a long and prosperous continuation of the culinary studio for other adventurers of the senses to discover.
You, Torben, became my reader because you were there too and know how it felt exploring these little dishes of fancy “things.” Some dead, some recently alive, some still alive—herbal plants and sea snails and sushi-like mysteries—and spared the common quivering oyster.
D.R.G. (10/6/2025)
fivewillowsliteraryreview.blog 