PORTLAND, Maine — Chef Inunnguaq Hegelund did not arrive in Portland with a suitcase full of whale blubber. It wouldn’t have passed through customs.
The Greenland chef, here for a week to cook at Vinland restaurant on Congress Street, is teaching chef/owner David Levi a few tricks while inflecting Maine’s culinary capital with a touch of the Arctic.
The restaurant each night through Sunday is offering some dishes you might not normally see in Portland, such as raw lamb, raw sole and partially cooked beef hearts.
If this were Greenland, the beef heart would be musk ox and traditionally it would be eaten frozen, said Hegelund. We’re talking about a country that barely exceeds 50 degrees Fahrenheit, after all.
“Fish and meat freezes very quickly and so we just eat it when it’s fresh,” said the 29 year-old chef, who had never been to the U.S. before this week. “There is no stove in the wild so you eat things cold.”
This new Nordic cuisine by way of Greenland and Maine is part of Arctic Plates in Portland, a side event in conjunction with the Arctic Council meetings here this week.
After meaty topics like trade and climate change are discussed by day, meals like raw lamb with blueberry, nori sea rocket and tropea onion — a rustic stew called “suaasat,” made of beef, potatoes, rice crackers and kale — are served by night.
“This is a menu that looks as much as possible to Greenland and more broadly north,” said Levi, who shares his open- kitchen with Hegelund all week.
Hegelund, a freelance chef who’s cooked at top Greenland restaurants like Ulo, likes to forage, but has few farms to choose from back home. “I don’t think it would be possible to do this,” he said, envious of Levi’s bevy of local purveyors.
One chef was born in the Upper East Side, and the other comes from a fishing village in Greenland — but they share a sense of cooking according to place. Levi’s restaurant is famous for only using local ingredients, while Hegelund uses ingredients like seal and whale back in Greenland. Whales are still hunted and consumed in Greenland, despite concerns from conservationists.
“Suaasat, a traditional dish in Greenland, we cook up with seal or whale with rice, potatoes and onions. We take an almost ugly dish and make it really beautiful,” said Hegelund, who is getting a crash course on pairing ingredients New England style.
“Frying the meat is the same, but there are some dishes I haven’t seen before.”
When asked which ones, he replied, “most of them.”
The Vinland meets Greenland menu is served all week through Sunday starting at 5 p.m. Vinland, 593 Congress St., Portland.
