Thehagengnome
While the hotel is nicely located in an idyllic location with a historic rustic building, I had my fair share of problems with this visit as a whole.||It's clear the tech of this hotel is lagging behind the times, from keycards from prior generations to TVs that have seen much better days.||First of all the room itself is spacious enough, and doesn't feel overly cramped, the priorly mentioned TV is an afterthought at best though, and not something you can really enjoy anything on anyhow. The biggest problem with the room is the bathroom, it is relatively small and the shower is miniscule, and not one I would even fit into due to my stature. This is a big sign of when this hotel was last renovated, and is much below par from what I expect of a hotel with an agreement with Thon.||While this is a personal pet peeve, the hotel does not have a coffee machine at all, not even in the breakfast area, and only serves pre brewed coffee of relatively low quality, which is something I never like.||As there are extremely limited options in terms of restaurants in Selbu, we decided to just eat at the hotel restaurant, which turned out to not be the best idea.||The menu is understandably small as the traffic is low here and they do not want to waste food. That being said, each course only had three options, so I got the reindeer for my Main while my father had the fish of the day, then we both had the 'homemade' caramel pudding for desert.||Now the reindeer itself was treated well, it got served medium rare or so, which is what I requested, and it had also been given time to rest so the meat was tasty and juicy. Perhaps a little more salt and pepper but that is just a nitpick.||Now the sides for my main were far from perfect. The brussel sprouts were sadly a bit watery and loose for my taste, and they could have been given a good bit more crunch or contrast. This is even more important since the rest of the dish did not really give that contrast either.||The brown sauce was fine for game meat but nothing special. The best surprise In the dish was the addition of some cripsy bacon bits. This gave some much needed saltiness and crispness to the dish and suited the meat well also.||The mash that accompanied the dish was very lackluster. It had practically no taste and lacked heavily in salt, pepper, butter or other ingredients to make it shine. To me I think a proper pomme puree would have been much better suited if they wanted to do a mash with this dish, but alas.||In the end I also feel some more contrast, in textures especially, would have helped greatly in this dish, some more vegetables and mushrooms for example. The meat was the hero though and the best part of the dish, so well done on that part at least.||My father had the fish of the day, and he had the same lackluster mash. His carrots were also on the soggier side which did not help anything. While he said the fish itself was well made, they had left the skin on and treated it terribly.||The skin was oily, fatty and fishy and with a soggy feel as well it was very unpalatable. If you are to retain the skin on the fish you are about to serve, you always serve the skin properly crisp or otherwise well treated. That you serve the fish with such a terrible excuse for a skin is very disappointing and not acceptable in a restaurant setting.||This brought us to desert. We both had ordered the homemade caramel pudding, as we both love a good homemade one when done well. But oh boy, was this not a treat to say the least this time around.||The caramel pudding itself felt almost completely tasteless and it was clear with the consistency that it was overcooked and much too compact. To further make this worse, the caramel sauce was incredibly dark, salty and bitter, and to me tasted clearly burnt. That aftertaste alone was terrible and ruined the desert on its own. The sauce was more like a syrup as well with how much it had been reduced.||To cap this all off the amount of cream was negligible on the plate, and felt way out of proportion to the other elements. They had tried to make this artistic look with the pudding and cream around it and on top of it, but that made the balance very poor and much more cream would have been liked in this case. The cream itself was also very average and didn't add much of anything to the dish. A Chantilly cream would have done a lot instead.||While I am happy when chef's get to express themselves artistically on a plate, that should never hamper the enjoyment and balance of a dish, which is what happened in this instance.||The desert especially was quite poor, and ended the entire meal on a sour note. My own pudding and sauce is Leagues better, which is saying something in itself.||The staff were generally helpful and kind, so I don't have much complaints there.||If you are looking for dinner in the area though, I would far from recommend this hotel resturant to start.||As a whole, a decent experience in parts, but not a hotel I will revisit anytime soon.