After its much-anticipated opening in March, Fet-Fisk was quickly met with national accolades.
The Nordic eatery — whose name means “greasy/fat fish” in Swedish — caught the attention of the New York Times, which listed it as one of 50 best restaurants in America. In November, Eater recognized it as one of the best new restaurants of 2024, calling Fet-Fisk’s signature pickled mackerel “a textural dream.”
Owner, chef, and James Beard Award Semifinalist Nik Forsberg tells Pittsburgh City Paper that while the runaway success “feels great,” he wears it lightly. Forsberg gives massive credit to his team, including co-founder and creative director Sarah LaPonte, and the city of Pittsburgh for “accepting our weird, Nordic-inspired menu and loving it.”
On a weekend night, the homey but modern Bloomfield spot — which took over former mainstay Lombardozzi’s Restaurant — is packed, serving tested favorites like scallop crudo and whole grilled branzino alongside a recently debuted celery root gnocchi in broth, a comforting, flavorful dish using all parts of the vegetable that Forsberg calls a “celery-bration.”
“It’s nice we’ve been able to consistently impress people that are coming in with the expectations that we’re a nationally acclaimed restaurant,” he says of the recent rush, but “it’s no secret buzz dies down … and we do want to be a neighborhood drinking and eating spot at the end of the day.”
Fet-Fisk began as a pop-up in 2019, hosting biweekly communal dinners. The restaurant recently remembered the project’s “scrappy DIY ethos,” which included hand-drawn maps for diners, a lot of improvisation, and seafood dishes rarely seen on a Pittsburgh menu. Dinners feature sustainably-sourced meat and local, seasonal produce — an outgrowth of Forsberg’s previous stint as an organic farmer and commitment to Appalachian agriculture.
Forsberg says taking a headlong dive into farming is characteristic of his approach to the service industry.
“Something about the way I am, I like to stay occupied. I like to work on projects with my friends, which [Fet-Fisk] is an extreme example of,” he says. “I don’t go half in on anything, I go 150% in on one thing.”
The plan to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant was always in the works, but when Forsberg and the Fet-Fisk team saw Lombardozzi’s, “everything that we had been working on up until that point just finally clicked in,” he says. Though “we had big shoes to fill … it felt kind of perfect, because there was so much history in the space.”
LaPonte recently penned an Instagram birthday tribute to Forsberg praising him as the heart of the operation and someone who “is never not thinking about how to make what he does, better.” Among other examples, he took a wine pairing course, drained “25-year-old [Mountain Dew] lines and pulled [them] through a maze of floorboards,” and did a large chunk of the restoration work on the Lombardozzi’s building. He will even jump in to polish the silver on short-staffed nights.
Forsberg admits that even with his hands full in the kitchen, he’s trying to learn more about front-of-house operations and dip into Fet-Fisk’s reservation software. He’s also now a known figure around town — spotted at the bank and the grocery store — something that “brightens [his] day,” but that he didn’t anticipate (and please don’t compare him to The Bear).
“My MO is definitely more, bury my nose in my work,” Forsberg says. “[But] it’s nice that people recognize me and appreciate … what we’ve set out to do. I get a real kick out of serving people and creating a beautiful night.”
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2024 and Pittsburgh’s People of the Year (2024).
