Tundra to Table: Inuit Culinary Experience

Tundra to Table: Inuit Culinary Experience

Available in Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic

Overview

Our ground-breaking Tundra to Table experience offers guests a one-of-a-kind adventure into the culinary traditions of the Inuit in Greenland and Nunavut. Guests who participate in this on-ship optional add-on will enjoy dishes from these Arctic regions prepared by Inuit chefs, and learn about local Inuit culture and culinary traditions. 

Please see your expedition for pricing and availability.

Culinary Experience Details

Guests will enjoy four courses of modern Inuit fusion-style cuisine during a dinner hosted by Inuit chefs, who will talk about the origins of the food and elements of Inuit cooking.

The dinner, featuring regional tableware, will include cultural storytelling.

Guests will join two tables at the front of Balena restaurant on Ultramarine.

Participants will have a choice between meat or fish between two of four courses.

Highlights

Guest can savor food in its purest, most natural state.

At the heart of this experience, enjoyed in Ultramarine‘s main restaurant, Balena, is the purity of the ingredients, such as seafood caught fresh from the Arctic waters, and free-roaming game that consume naturally organic grass and vegetation. Dishes will vary by voyage but may include: beer-braised muskox served with Greenlandic mashed potatoes, mushroom sauce and berry jam; South Greenlandic lamb served with Pommes Anna (layers of sliced potatoes), sweet turnip ragu, pickled angelica and wild gravy; honey-glazed ptarmigan served with turnip purée; and pickled halibut served with lumpfish dip and bread. 

Program hosted by Inuit chefs who are experts in Indigenous cuisine.

Guests will enjoy modern Inuit fusion-style cuisine with dishes reflecting the culinary traditions of the region of your voyage, whether it’s muskox in Greenland or Arctic char in Nunavut. Local chefs will share the story of their people through food.

It’s the only exclusively Inuit culinary experience of its kind.

Quark Expeditions is the only polar operator to offer this kind of culinary collaboration with local Inuit chefs, which will only be available on select Arctic voyages, as listed below.

Expeditions With Tundra to Table

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Please note: The starting from prices shown above reflect the lowest available per person fare across all voyages for the specified expedition. Tundra to Table is only available on Ultramarine voyages and may only be offered on select departure dates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Supply chains in Greenland and Nunavut are very different, yet both regions have an established network of small and large suppliers. Our procurement strategy will be led by our Inuit partners and be designed in collaboration with the chefs who will be hosting the program onboard. They will design procurement plans that bring the freshest and most regionally authentic ingredients on board.
 
The style of food served will be ‘Inuit-fusion,’ combining traditional foods of the Inuit with other contemporary culinary styles. Not all ingredients will be sourced locally. In fact, approximately 50% of the ingredients used in the program will be purchased through our traditional supply channels. Approximately 30% will be sourced from regional suppliers (larger food companies in Greenland and Nunavut that also export their products), and the remaining 20% will be purchased locally from smaller suppliers and communities, or foraged by the Inuit chefs themselves.

We will not source food from any communities experiencing food insecurity without the express endorsement from a council of local representatives. Such an endorsement will confirm that any food purchases made in their community will not contribute to issues related to food security. The needs of local residents always come first.

In addition to celebrating Inuit food and culture, voyages that include this culinary experience will also provide a venue, such as chef-led foraging walks, for guests to learn more about the evolution of food systems in the Arctic, including affordability, integration of harvested foods into the supply chain, scarcity and the stigmatization of certain ingredients. One of the topics will be the perception of certain foods eaten in this part of the world that aren’t consumed elsewhere (whale, seal) and the misconceptions that exist. It’s always been part of our ethos to immerse ourselves fully in the places we visit, and for us that means understanding their way of life as much as possible.

No animal species or population that currently carries a special conservation designation will be used in the Tundra to Table: Inuit Culinary Experience. That means we will not procure any species that is deemed to be threatened, vulnerable or endangered. 

Our preliminary resource for this analysis will be the IUCN* list of threatened species which would alert us to a species of concern. In addition, we will also work with regional scientific and conservation agencies to confirm the status of local populations of wildlife. For example, a species might not be of concern broadly but a specific local population could be vulnerable or vice versa.

*Established in 1964, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global extinction risk status of animal, fungus and plant species. 

Yes. We will only use foods that have been procured through ethical and sustainable harvesting and hunting methods, preferably by local Indigenous people of the Arctic for whom traditional harvest and hunting rights are part of their way of life.

It’s our aim that this program will support existing food-focused initiatives in the Arctic, as well as encourage the development of new, grassroots food-focused projects in Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homeland in Canada) and Greenland.

Contributions made from the profits will be disclosed in our annual sustainability report.

Tundra to Table: Inuit Culinary Experience

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