This weekend we took Vingtor out of our usual rooms and onto the street. During Gladmaten, the food festival here in Stavanger, we ran our own tent, which we shared with Matboden, Fisketorget and Seid, and served confit tusk, a dish we had spent a long time getting exactly the way we wanted it. It turned into a weekend we will remember.

Rogalands Avis stopped by and gave us a six, the top score on the Norwegian dice scale. “Wonderfully ambitious,” the reviewer wrote, praising the tusk as a fish that stands up to slow cooking in fat, a bold sauce and a ras el hanout that lifted the whole plate. When someone tasting their way through an entire festival lands on top marks with us, it means a great deal.

There is more work behind a single plate than you might think. Our chef, Kristian, and the team worked through 280 kilos of tusk loin, 230 kilos of yellow beet and 130 kilos of leek over the weekend. The leek was dried in the oven for a total of sixty hours, and we went through around forty liters of sauce. By the time the weekend was over, we had served more than 3,500 portions.

Then came the nomination for Dish of the Year at Gladmaten. To be singled out among all the good food made in this region is a recognition we accept with real joy and a good measure of humility.

For us this is about more than a single dish. Vingtor is a shared working space where people from different companies and fields share a table and an everyday routine. A tent at Gladmaten is that same idea put into practice: many hands pulling in the same direction, and the pleasure of making something together that we believe in. What we practice every day, building something as a community, is also what carried us through the festival weekend.

Thank you to everyone who found their way to our tent and took the time for a chat and a taste. Thank you to RA for the kind words, and to the jury and the organizers behind Gladmaten for the nomination. We will carry it with us into the work ahead.