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Business Insider
22-04-2025
- Business Insider
I ate at the world's northernmost McDonald's. The menu was packed with items I'd never seen before, but I'm not sure it was worth the trek.
Nestled into the side of a desolate, snow-capped mountain, its servers wearing fur-lined uniforms and serving up reindeer burgers — that's what you might envision when you hear the words "the world's northernmost McDonald's." The reality is a bit less exciting. On a recent visit to Tromsø, Norway — home to the world's most northern McDonald's — I learned that the restaurant has a menu, ambiance, and service similar to a McDonald's I could visit in the US. Still, a trip to Tromsø, the northernmost city in the world, would not have been complete without crossing off a bunch of northernmost feats. The Tromsø area, which has about 79,000 residents, is located well above the Arctic Circle at nearly 70 degrees north latitude, higher than most of Canada, Russia, and Greenland. Before the Tromsø location opened in 2024, the world's northernmost McDonald's was in Rovaniemi, a city along the Arctic Circle in Finland that hosts the Santa Claus Village. Upon its opening in 1997, Jim Cantalupo, then McDonald's International's president and CEO, quipped, "Since this restaurant is the closest to the North Pole, we hope this will become Santa's favorite neighborhood restaurant." The title had previously belonged to Murmansk, a Russian city that lost its McDonald's location in 2022 amid the invasion of Ukraine. The Troms ø McDonald's seats 140 guests and is on the first floor of an office building The Tromsø location opened as part of McDonald's initiative to add more McDonald's locations in Arctic Norway. At the time of its opening, McDonald's said it aimed to hire about 60 staff and would be open between 18 and 21 hours a day. As someone who often seeks out hole-in-the-wall restaurants and local joints, eating at McDonald's as my first meal in Norway didn't sit right. (Note: I still got my reindeer burger, whale carpaccio, and elk salami at other points in the trip.) Still, how many people could say they've eaten here? Turns out, quite a few, as when I visited at noon, it was packed with tourists navigating the snowy streets and taking photos of the many signs indicating it's "The northernmost McDonald's in the world." I also saw a few locals stopping in for a workday lunch, including some students from the local university. It took a few minutes to find an open screen to order — nobody was ordering at the counter — and five minutes to secure a table for five. Service was fast, and some staff delivered food to tables directly. The interior was spacious, with about 30 or so tables, but it did not scream "Arctic" to me. I thought it resembled other McDonald's we stopped at in Scandinavia. The main dining room was bright, lit by bars of white lights, while its walls and the ceiling were a light brown. The 'Happy Fish' and 'McFeast' were menu items I hadn't seen before With all the fanfare about the location, I expected the menu to have some location-specific items. While there were plenty of options you can't find in the US, pretty much all of them are on the menus of other Norwegian McDonald's locations. Still, I was amused by items such as the homestyle hot chipotle burger, the "big tasty bacon" sandwich, the big chicken salsa, and the McFeast. Some of the sides were also compelling, including chili cheese tops, hot wings, and sweet potato fries, coupled with various spicy and sweet dips. Given the location, I also expected more seafood options. They only had the fish McFeast — featuring lettuce, cheese, tomato, onions, pickles, and mayonnaise — a filet-o-fish, and a small fish sandwich they called "Happy Fish." There was a small vegetarian menu with a few sandwiches, a wrap, and a bulgar salad. Breakfast items felt similar overall to those in the US, with the exception of a McToast, a round ham-and-cheese toasted sandwich. The drinks and dessert sections were the most distinct compared to a US McDonald's. McFlurry flavors included cookie dough and regional chocolate candies like the almond-caramel-filled Daim and Non Stop, which are similar to M&Ms. I also enjoyed seeing cinnamon rolls, Oreo muffins, and different types of macarons and donuts. Drinks that caught my eye, some of which were prepared at a different counter, included a banana milkshake, a Banoffee shake, various types of tea, and coffee varieties including a caramel latte and flat white. Prices were in line with what I would expect: My McFeast, fries, and a drink were about $14, while my Daim McFlurry was about $3.50. The food was good but similar to what I would expect in the US The food tasted in line with any other McDonald's I've been to in the US — the quality felt slightly better, though that could've been because of the novelty of the experience. The portions seemed about the same as the US. The Big Mac BLT was an interesting combination that worked well, as the bacon wasn't too overpowering. I thought the chili cheese tops, a crunchy cheese nugget with chili pieces, were very yummy, slightly spicy, and quite filling. The McFlurry was excellent, though, and I loved the crunch from the chocolatey Daim. Only one feature really set this McDonald's apart from other locations The one distinguishing factor at this McDonald's was the postcards they sold that read "Welcome to the northernmost McDonald's in the World," featuring a golden arch jutting into the globe above Tromsø. I felt the same way about the world's northernmost Burger King, which had slightly more locals but overall had a similar menu to any other Burger King and a very standard interior. The rest of our meals on the trip were much more exciting — we tried reindeer burgers and reindeer hotdogs at other places in town, whale in a fishing village a few hours away, Norwegian Chinese food, pizza that wasn't significantly worse than a New York slice, and a surprising Eritrean meal. Still, the McDonald's will likely stick with me for a while, even if it felt gimmicky. Sure, Tromsø is in many ways a culinary gem, featuring dozens of higher-end restaurants serving fine steaks and seafood, but for a cheaper lunch with a bit of novelty, I'd recommend stopping by at least for a McFlurry and picking up a postcard … and maybe saving your appetite for a reindeer hot dog down the street.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Yahoo
Discover the surprising cuisine of this Guatemalan town
Livingston is not an island, but it exists so separately from the rest of Guatemala that locals use the word 'mainland' to mean everywhere beyond its boundaries. Triple-isolated on the east coast by rainforest, river and saltwater, this small fishing town is cut off from the national road network and only accessible by boat. It used to be the country's main seaport on the Caribbean, but that role shifted south east long ago to the larger Puerto Barrios, at the far end of Amatique Bay, and Livingston has been somewhat cut adrift. I arrive hungry, on a small charter vessel, via the river mouth of the Río Dulce. The captain recommends Happy Fish, a wooden bar and restaurant that looks like a Wild West saloon, perched on the pier where he ties up the boat. At dusk, he tells me, it becomes a busy nightclub. But it's barely afternoon, and the place has a relaxed feel, with a few early birds having taken the dockside tables for lunch. Everyone seems to have ordered the house special, tapado. It's a traditional seafood dish, served as a full meal in three parts: a rich soup of coconut milk, shrimp and plantains; a whole fried palometa, a ubiquitous fish of the Caribbean coast; and a side of rice and beans. I visit the kitchen to see how it's made and find chef María Luisa Cobos in her cap and apron. Working over a gas stove in the midday heat, she adds the fruit and shellfish to a pot of thick liquid, which has turned reddish with achiote (annatto), the staple spice and colouring of Guatemalan cooking. Others may have their own ways of making tapado, but María claims hers is the only correct one — the recipe developed here and passed down from her mother and grandmother. Custom dictates you eat tapado slowly, ideally with a cold beer and a fresh, warm coconut bread roll to mop up the broth. So that's what I do, taking my time. Then, I pop in to see owner Walder Veliz at the other, older branch of Happy Fish, a smaller venue with a similar pioneer-kitchen feel that he's run for more than 40 years in the centre of town. Walder considers the food of his home port a measure of its isolation from 'mainland' Guatemala. The rest of the country's cuisine relies heavily on chicken, beef, stuffed chillies and corn tortillas, sharing certain dishes with Central American neighbours. Here in Livingston, they eat more like Caribbean islanders. 'We use so much more fish, coconut, plantain and green banana,' he says. The ingredients come from the surrounding waters and plantations, and the community works with that bounty. The recipes — tapado, as well as other popular foods like cassava bread, banana tamales and tomato-based 'boil-up' sauce with dumplings and fried snapper — are particular favourites of the Garifuna people. This ethnic group accounts for some 4,000 of Livingston's residents, around a quarter of the town's total population. They are descended from the African slaves who escaped a shipwreck off the island of St Vincent in the 1600s. Building families with native Caribs, they created a distinct ethnicity that then dispersed to Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras and here, on the edge of Guatemala. In their troubled passage from one enclave to another, the Garifuna were often subject to the cruelties of foreign naval powers and marauding pirates. That history is marked all over Livingston. The town itself was named after 19th-century American politician Edward Livingston, whose legal codes became the basis for local government. But the main street pays homage to quasi-mythical hero Marco Sánchez Díaz, a Black Haitian soldier credited with leading the first Garifuna here from Honduras. Walking up that thoroughfare today, I pass tropical birds perched over housefronts painted with wild animal murals, and stop outside a little fruit and veg store owned by Leti Fuentes, who sits back in a deckchair. She also sells her homemade banana bread by the slice. Moist, fragrant, nutty and slightly chewy, it's the best I've ever tasted, and I tell her so. She replies, 'I know it is.' A bit further up the street is Buga Mama, a Maya-run restaurant with a wooden deck out over the water. Operating as part of the Ak'Tenamit project, the business gives Indigenous students on-the-job training in the service industry. Manager Wendy Tzalan comes from the Mopan people, a sub-group of the Maya, and was herself a beneficiary of the programme. 'I wanted to pass on my knowledge,' she says, 'and help these kids become what they want.' She shows me into a kitchen filled with interns, all prepping menu items that deploy local seafood across an intercontinental range of quesadillas, pizzas and rice dishes. Much of what's available from the day's catch is sold a few blocks away, where the street opens onto a portside plaza known as Garifuna Park. That fish is also fried in the open at tented market stalls, which fill the square with smoke. Between a coconut vendor and a busy cantina stands Artisina Garifuna, an al fresco health bar and natural pharmacy made of crates and cargo nets. There, bearded 'bush doctor' Carlos Flores Garden trades in remedies concocted from homegrown medicinal plants — star vine, cinnamon, sarsaparilla — and laid out in apothecary bottles. His signature recipe is a potent distillation of 27 roots that he calls guifitti, and which he claims can cure anything from diabetes to infertility. He also blends it into a rum that he sells by the shot, which smells and tastes like a barn fire. Only after I down it does he tell me that the alcohol mostly cancels out the health benefits. 'Nah, the rum just burns,' he says. 'It's good though, right?' Livingston comes to an end another five minutes' walk away, at a short arc of white sand where the blues of sea and river meet. Local band Aceite de Coco ('Coconut Oil') are on the beach performing Garifuna music — an Afro-Caribbean form of drumming and chanting derived from ancestral rituals. A dancer named Kimara shimmies in a dress screen-printed with the poster for the classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead, while bandmates Chuleta, Alfonso and Kyoto play bongos and maracas, and sing in the Garifuna language. They sound cheerful, but the lyrics tell of historical heartbreaks and bloody revenges against pirates. Or so translates Chuleta — the chattiest of the group — when they take a break at the hut-like beach bar La Playita de Barique. The place is new, opened late last year by Claudia Monroy and her husband Robin. It's a prime spot, says Claudia, her smile balanced somewhere between pride and modesty — the sand acts as a kind of landing strip where locals leave their boats to shop or eat in town. Now, they stop here, too, for fresh-made bar snacks, which draw on the same tropical flavours that have sustained the Garifuna for centuries. The food, the music, the light on the water — all conspire to tell you Livingston is an island, even though you know it's not. This paid content article was created for Guatemalan Institute of Tourism. It does not necessarily reflect the views of National Geographic, National Geographic Traveller (UK) or their editorial subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
National Geographic
13-03-2025
- National Geographic
Discover the surprising cuisine of this Guatemalan town
Livingston is not an island, but it exists so separately from the rest of Guatemala that locals use the word 'mainland' to mean everywhere beyond its boundaries. Triple-isolated on the east coast by rainforest, river and saltwater, this small fishing town is cut off from the national road network and only accessible by boat. It used to be the country's main seaport on the Caribbean, but that role shifted south east long ago to the larger Puerto Barrios, at the far end of Amatique Bay, and Livingston has been somewhat cut adrift. I arrive hungry, on a small charter vessel, via the river mouth of the Río Dulce. The captain recommends Happy Fish, a wooden bar and restaurant that looks like a Wild West saloon, perched on the pier where he ties up the boat. At dusk, he tells me, it becomes a busy nightclub. But it's barely afternoon, and the place has a relaxed feel, with a few early birds having taken the dockside tables for lunch. Everyone seems to have ordered the house special, tapado. It's a traditional seafood dish, served as a full meal in three parts: a rich soup of coconut milk, shrimp and plantains; a whole fried palometa, a ubiquitous fish of the Caribbean coast; and a side of rice and beans. I visit the kitchen to see how it's made and find chef María Luisa Cobos in her cap and apron. Working over a gas stove in the midday heat, she adds the fruit and shellfish to a pot of thick liquid, which has turned reddish with achiote (annatto), the staple spice and colouring of Guatemalan cooking. Others may have their own ways of making tapado, but María claims hers is the only correct one — the recipe developed here and passed down from her mother and grandmother. Chef María Luisa Cobos with fresh ingredients to prepare tapado. Photograph by Francesco Lastrucci Custom dictates you eat tapado slowly, ideally with a cold beer and a fresh, warm coconut bread roll to mop up the broth. So that's what I do, taking my time. Then, I pop in to see owner Walder Veliz at the other, older branch of Happy Fish, a smaller venue with a similar pioneer-kitchen feel that he's run for more than 40 years in the centre of town. Walder considers the food of his home port a measure of its isolation from 'mainland' Guatemala. The rest of the country's cuisine relies heavily on chicken, beef, stuffed chillies and corn tortillas, sharing certain dishes with Central American neighbours. Here in Livingston, they eat more like Caribbean islanders. 'We use so much more fish, coconut, plantain and green banana,' he says. The ingredients come from the surrounding waters and plantations, and the community works with that bounty. The recipes — tapado, as well as other popular foods like cassava bread, banana tamales and tomato-based 'boil-up' sauce with dumplings and fried snapper — are particular favourites of the Garifuna people. This ethnic group accounts for some 4,000 of Livingston's residents, around a quarter of the town's total population. They are descended from the African slaves who escaped a shipwreck off the island of St Vincent in the 1600s. Building families with native Caribs, they created a distinct ethnicity that then dispersed to Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras and here, on the edge of Guatemala. In their troubled passage from one enclave to another, the Garifuna were often subject to the cruelties of foreign naval powers and marauding pirates. That history is marked all over Livingston. The town itself was named after 19th-century American politician Edward Livingston, whose legal codes became the basis for local government. But the main street pays homage to quasi-mythical hero Marco Sánchez Díaz, a Black Haitian soldier credited with leading the first Garifuna here from Honduras. Walking up that thoroughfare today, I pass tropical birds perched over housefronts painted with wild animal murals, and stop outside a little fruit and veg store owned by Leti Fuentes, who sits back in a deckchair. She also sells her homemade banana bread by the slice. Moist, fragrant, nutty and slightly chewy, it's the best I've ever tasted, and I tell her so. She replies, 'I know it is.' 'Bush doctor' Carlos Flores Garden sells traditional herbs and medicines at a stall by the Parque Municipal. Photograph by Francesco Lastrucci A bit further up the street is Buga Mama, a Maya-run restaurant with a wooden deck out over the water. Operating as part of the Ak'Tenamit project, the business gives Indigenous students on-the-job training in the service industry. Manager Wendy Tzalan comes from the Mopan people, a sub-group of the Maya, and was herself a beneficiary of the programme. 'I wanted to pass on my knowledge,' she says, 'and help these kids become what they want.' She shows me into a kitchen filled with interns, all prepping menu items that deploy local seafood across an intercontinental range of quesadillas, pizzas and rice dishes. Much of what's available from the day's catch is sold a few blocks away, where the street opens onto a portside plaza known as Garifuna Park. That fish is also fried in the open at tented market stalls, which fill the square with smoke. Between a coconut vendor and a busy cantina stands Artisina Garifuna, an al fresco health bar and natural pharmacy made of crates and cargo nets. There, bearded 'bush doctor' Carlos Flores Garden trades in remedies concocted from homegrown medicinal plants — star vine, cinnamon, sarsaparilla — and laid out in apothecary bottles. His signature recipe is a potent distillation of 27 roots that he calls guifitti, and which he claims can cure anything from diabetes to infertility. He also blends it into a rum that he sells by the shot, which smells and tastes like a barn fire. Only after I down it does he tell me that the alcohol mostly cancels out the health benefits. 'Nah, the rum just burns,' he says. 'It's good though, right?' Bandmates Chuleta, Alfonso and Kyoto play Garifuna music on the beach by La Playita de Barique. Photograph by Francesco Lastrucci Tostones (fried green plantain) with crab at La Playita de Barique. Photograph by Francesco Lastrucci Livingston comes to an end another five minutes' walk away, at a short arc of white sand where the blues of sea and river meet. Local band Aceite de Coco ('Coconut Oil') are on the beach performing Garifuna music — an Afro-Caribbean form of drumming and chanting derived from ancestral rituals. A dancer named Kimara shimmies in a dress screen-printed with the poster for the classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead, while bandmates Chuleta, Alfonso and Kyoto play bongos and maracas, and sing in the Garifuna language. They sound cheerful, but the lyrics tell of historical heartbreaks and bloody revenges against pirates. Or so translates Chuleta — the chattiest of the group — when they take a break at the hut-like beach bar La Playita de Barique. The place is new, opened late last year by Claudia Monroy and her husband Robin. It's a prime spot, says Claudia, her smile balanced somewhere between pride and modesty — the sand acts as a kind of landing strip where locals leave their boats to shop or eat in town. Now, they stop here, too, for fresh-made bar snacks, which draw on the same tropical flavours that have sustained the Garifuna for centuries. The food, the music, the light on the water — all conspire to tell you Livingston is an island, even though you know it's not. Indirect flights are available from London, Manchester or Edinburgh to Guatemala City (taking around 15-19 hours), with stopovers usually in the US. Town centres tend to be walkable, and taxis (including Uber) or buses are available for longer journeys. For more information, see This paid content article was created for Guatemalan Institute of Tourism. It does not necessarily reflect the views of National Geographic, National Geographic Traveller (UK) or their editorial staffs. To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
