There's a floating orb restaurant in Norway with serious "The Menu" vibes

Sometimes real life is influenced by fiction, sometimes it’s the other way around, and then sometimes it’s a confusing back-and-forth with hard-to-decipher origins.

The Menu, the 2022 horror-comedy film that skewers fine dining restaurants and the behavior of the über wealthy that dine at them, was actually based on a real restaurant experience.

Will Tracy, one of the film’s screenwriters, once dined at Cornelius Sjømatrestaurant in Norway, which requires diners to take a boat to the miles away restaurant – much like the fictional Hawthorn in The Menu.

In an interview with Seth Meyers around the film’s release, Tracy describes the experience of arriving for the five-hour tasting menu and seeing the boat that had brought them there slowly pull away – which made him start to panic.

While Hawthorn is a satirical, fictional take on this experience, there is something unsettling about being abandoned in such a setting.

Turns out Cornelius Sjømatrestaurant isn’t the only exclusive restaurant in the Scandinavian country that requires boat passage, and while diners here don’t meet the same sinister end as depicted in the film, there is something rather ominous about fine dining that is so elite as to feel somehow claustrophobic.

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TikTok user Mari Eriksmoen recently shared a video of her experience dining at Restaurant Iris’ Salmon Eye, a silver, lozenge-shaped restaurant pod located in the Hardanger Fjord in Norway.

From a distance – and diners all approach from a distance, as arrival is only available by electric boat – the restaurant looks like an impossibly smooth stone, both alien and naturally occurring at once.

Eriksmoen’s video shows diners being escorted through a large vault-like door before being shown a short film about food waste. The interiors look like a spaceship, with further projections and food-centered installations, and the tasting menu experience features a whopping 18 dishes.

@marieriksmoen Most spectacular restaurant in Norway! #restaurant #spectacular #michelin #michelinstar #iristherestaurant #hardangerfjord #norway ♬ Theme from “A Summer Place” – Percy Faith And His Orchestra

According to Eriksmoen, the views are “insane” and the food was just as spectacular – “This will definitely get three Michelin stars eventually,” she says.

Restaurant Iris’ website bills the dining experience as an expedition of sorts: “The experience at Iris is, quite literally, a journey. It starts with a boat trip from the picturesque town of Rosendal, with a pit stop and welcoming snack at Chef Anika Madsen’s boathouse on the island of Snilstveitøy.”

“Via the jetty of the floating art installation Salmon Eye, the evening kicks off with a multisensory underwater experience, to culminate in the dining room where stunning views of the fjord and mountain ranges create the backdrop for our set tasting menu,” the website’s description continues.

Certainly not a cheap experience, as Eriksmoen admits in her video, the Restaurant Iris Expedition costs Norwegian KR3,200, which is about C$415, per person.

The restaurant accepts reservations at the “glittering, floating orb” called Salmon Eye through Explore Tock, which further describes the dining experience: “Unexpected and familiar ingredients from the cold Norwegian seas and the surrounding mountain range meet the creative mind of Head Chef Anika Madsen.”

And while we’re sure the experience is beautiful and inspiring and truly once-in-a-lifetime, we’re not about to take a boat to a restaurant any time soon – we’ve seen too many movies.