How Havila Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner works.

Havila offers a unique and thoughtfully curated dining experience, ensuring that guests enjoy excellent meals each day. Managing to feed all the ships guests breakfast, lunch and dinner needs some organisation behind it.

TL;DR

This blog post describes how Havila organises its main restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, whilst serving distinct menus that appeal to all within a friendly and relaxed atmosphere.

Note - This post refers to the main restaurant - the Havrand, named after the point on the horizon where the sky meets the sea. Breakfast, lunch and dinner is served here to the majority of guests.

The Havrand restaurant offers a number of fixed dishes (i.e. are on the menu every day), and an additional number that match the four different coastal regions as the ship sails through. This means that the menu subtly changes during the voyage allowing guests to try something different for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, whilst always having a few fall back dishes. The regions that influence the food are;

• Flavours of the Fjords

• Flavours of the polar region

• Flavours of the Arctic

• Flavours of the archipelago

Havila Breakfast

Breakfast changed between our first and second trips. It is now organised so that you can help yourself to small plates of cold breakfast items. As many as you want and finish. And you separately order hot food and hot drinks, again as much as you want through the dinning assistants. The hot food then turns up to your table a few minutes later.

In addition on the second trip the seating had changed - no longer do you have a reserved seat at your preferred time, its now an unreserved seat - so you tend to find yourself with a different set of people each day as there are very few tables for just 1 or 2.

Food wise, there is pretty much everything that you'd expect to be served for breakfast. The cold items tended to vary a little each day, whilst the hot menu was the same each day.

Havila Lunch

Lunch was my favourite. In fact if we had a late breakfast I would tend to hold back a little so I could have a larger lunch!

It was a tapas style affair - where you could order as many small dishes as you wanted. We tended to order five or six dishes between us, sharing a few of them, and then have a second or even a third round of dishes. Variety was good and changed every 3 days to match the coastal region being travelled through.

Seating and timing preferences are agreed with the restaurant manager once boarded on your first day - so same time and same seat for lunch and dinner through out the journey. I believe you can change where you sit - subject to their being space elsewhere.

Havila Dinner

Dinner is a 3 course affair starter, main dish, and dessert. I was told via some facebook comments from more recent guests that you can ask for a larger main course if desired. Vegetables are served separately, and you can ask for more of these as well. Again - ordering as much as you finish.

Additional Points

• If you buy a bottle of wine with any meal the dinning assistants are happy to seal, stick a label with your name on it and store at the right temperature for when you want to have another glass.

• To prevent food waste portions are small - think a thrid of what you imagine they should be, but you can have as many as you want. Best thing is you don't find yourself full struggling to finish half a bowl of cold chips.

• Havila places an emphasis on using local ingredients, which helps support sustainability.

• There are also a different range of choices available at the Cafe (Havly) and Fine Dining (Hildring) which I don't cover here.

Final Thoughts

All this is served in a spacious dining room situated toward the back of the ship, with floor to ceilling windows providing fantastic views. Window seats aren't necessary - the views can be appreciated from any seat in the restaurant.

Opening hours

Breakfast: 07:00 – 10:00 - Final seating 09:30

Lunch: 11:30 – 14:30

Dinner: 18:00 – 21:00 - Final seating 20:30

Happy travels!