Taste of Bergen food tour: what is on it
In short: this is the food tour in Bergen, and the reason is scope rather than marketing. It is the only listing in the city that is food-first from start to finish: three and a half hours, thirteen tastings across five cafes and restaurants, capped at eight people, finishing at Fløirestauranten on Mount Fløyen with Bergen underneath you and the return funicular tickets included. It is wheelchair accessible. It is not suitable for vegans or vegetarians, though vegetarian and vegan options are available on 24 hours’ notice, with the offering adjusted to suit.
Thirteen tastings, and what they actually are
Thirteen is a number that sounds like a gimmick until you walk it. Eleven of them are food and two are drink, spread across five cafes and restaurants, which works out at a small plate every quarter of an hour or so with walking in between. Nobody leaves hungry and nobody is sat down to a full dinner either.
The listing names a good part of the menu: fresh seasonal seafood, traditional sardines, an award-winning local chocolate, a local meat and cheese platter, local apple cider, three cider tastings, a brown-cheese cheesecake, and seasonal meat and fish at the top. That last one is the Fløirestauranten stop and it is the closest the walk gets to a proper course.
The brown-cheese cheesecake is the tasting worth arriving curious about. Brown cheese is not cheese. It is made from whey, the by-product left over when cheese is made, boiled down with cream until it goes the colour of fudge, and it was invented in 1863 by a dairymaid called Anne Hov at a mountain farm in Gudbrandsdalen, roughly 400 km away over the mountains from here. Norway gave her the King’s Medal of Merit in silver for it in 1933, when she was 87. Putting it in a cheesecake is a Bergen joke about a thing that is not from Bergen, and it is the tasting people tend to remember. The whole brown cheese story.
The three cider tastings are the other thread. Norwegian cider means Hardanger, an hour or so east of the city, where the apples have to be grown inside the region and pressed, fermented and stored there too. Why the cider tastes the way it does this far north.
The funicular is not a throwaway
Return Fløibanen tickets come with the booking, and that is a real inclusion rather than a rounding error. The funicular has been running since 15 January 1918, climbs 302 m in 848 m of track, takes about six minutes and carries something like 2.4 million people a year in two cars called Rødhette and Blåmann. Almost every visitor to Bergen rides it at some point, so the question is only whether you ride it twice.
Ending a food walk at the top rather than starting there is the right way round. You arrive at Fløirestauranten having already eaten in five places down in the streets, and the city you have been walking through is laid out under the window. The funicular, in detail.
If you are riding the funicular again on your own later in the trip, note that between 15 June and 31 August it stops at the four intermediate stations only on the hour, between 09:00 and 15:00. Outside that window it runs straight up and straight down.
Eight people, and what the cap buys you
Eight is the number that decides how the afternoon runs. At eight you can ask what is on the plate and get an answer while you are still eating it, the group fits inside a small cafe without taking it over, and nobody spends the walk between venues at the back trying to hear. A food tour in a city this size is mostly the person leading it, and a cap of eight is what lets that person actually talk to you.
The balance is the thing a good guide gets right in both directions: enough explanation that you know what you are eating and where it came from, then enough quiet that you can eat it. Across five venues and thirteen tastings there is a lot to say and a lot of it is worth hearing — brown cheese, Hardanger apples, what Bergen ate when it lived on dried fish. What Bergen actually eats.
The dietary wall, said plainly
This listing is not suitable for vegans or vegetarians. It also says vegetarian and vegan options are available with 24 hours’ notice, on an adjusted offering. Both halves of that are true and you need both of them.
What it means in practice is that a walk built on seafood, sardines, a meat and cheese platter and seasonal meat and fish cannot simply have the meat lifted out of it and stay the same walk. Give the notice and you get a version of the tour. Turn up without having given it and you get a difficult conversation on a street corner. Every listing’s dietary position in one place.
Allergies sit in the same box. Small group, five venues, a fixed sequence of thirteen tastings: the flexibility exists, but it exists in advance.
What catches people out
Weather, pace and expectation, in roughly that order, and none of them is a fault in the tour.
Three and a half hours outdoors in a city that gets something like 2,495 mm of rain a year, on about two hundred days of it, will hand some people an afternoon they remember for the wrong reason. The walk goes ahead in it. What Bergen rain is actually like and what to wear for it.
The pace catches others. Thirteen tastings in three and a half hours is a rhythm, not a meal, and people who booked expecting to sit down for long stretches find themselves moving more than they planned. How long these things run, and what that feels like.
And there is the expectation gap about Norwegian food generally. People arrive wanting lutefisk and fårikål and leave having eaten sardines, chocolate and a cheesecake made from whey. The national dishes are mostly from somewhere else. What Bergen actually eats, versus what Norway is famous for.
What works
- The only listing in Bergen that is food-first from start to finish
- Thirteen tastings across five cafes and restaurants, eleven food and two drink
- Capped at eight people, so the guide can actually talk to you
- Return Fløibanen funicular tickets are included in the booking
- Ends at Fløirestauranten on Fløyen, with the city below
- Wheelchair accessible
- Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead
Worth knowing
- Not suitable for vegans or vegetarians without 24 hours’ notice, and the offering is adjusted when you give it
- Three and a half hours outdoors, in a city where it rains most weeks
- Thirteen small tastings is a rhythm rather than a sit-down meal
- Gratuities are not included
- Eight places fill up, and there is no second departure to fall back on
- English only
What the listing commits to
- Three and a half hours with a guide, in English
- Thirteen tastings — eleven food, two drink
- Five cafes and restaurants, ending at Fløirestauranten
- Return Fløibanen funicular tickets
- A group of no more than eight
- Free cancellation up to 24 hours before it starts
What it does not
- Gratuities
- A vegan or vegetarian version, unless you give 24 hours’ notice
- A guide in any language other than English
- A sit-down meal — this is thirteen tastings on the move
- Hotel pickup; you meet at the tourist office
Who should book it, and who should not
Book it if you have one afternoon in Bergen and you want somebody to explain the city through what is on the plate. Book it if you want the funicular anyway, because the return tickets are in the box. Book it if you are travelling alone and would rather be one of eight than one of forty. Book it if you want the one listing here where eating is the whole of the afternoon rather than a stop inside it.
Do not book it if you are vegan or vegetarian and cannot give 24 hours’ notice. Do not book it if you want ninety minutes rather than an afternoon, which is the cider tasting. Do not book it if what you actually want is the fjord, which is a six-hour bus day with one waffle in it. And do not book it if you want somebody’s kitchen table rather than five restaurants — that is the home-hosted lunch, which has a dog in the house.
The alternatives
The aperitivo tour below is three hours of drinks and tastings, for ages 20 and over. The cider tasting is ninety minutes and step-free.
New · ages 20+Bergen: Food and Drink Aperitivo Tour with Tastings
Shortest · step-freeBergen: Norwegian Cider Tasting Experience
Somebody’s kitchenBergen: Home-Hosted Lunch with a Local
Frequently asked questions
How many tastings are on the Taste of Bergen food tour?
Thirteen — eleven food and two drink — across five cafes and restaurants in three and a half hours, finishing at Fløirestauranten on Mount Fløyen. Whether the food is included.
Is the Taste of Bergen food tour suitable for vegetarians?
Not as it stands. The listing says it is not suitable for vegans or vegetarians, but that vegetarian and vegan options are available with 24 hours' notice, on an adjusted offering. What each Bergen listing states.
Is the Fløibanen funicular included?
Yes, return tickets come with the booking, and the walk ends at Fløirestauranten at the top. The ride climbs 302 m and takes about six minutes. More on the funicular.