Tuddal Høyfjellshotel: Norway's best hotel with a focus on local food

Einar Zakkæus and Malin Torsdatter Gurholt run what was voted Norway's best hotel by Nettavisen readers in 2025. It's not a title the couple takes lightly, and a significant part of the way to guests' hearts is, as it should be, through the food.

– It's the love for the ingredients and talking to the farmers and things like that that's fun. We have a very close relationship with Gunleik, says hotelier and head chef at Tuddal Høyfjellshotel, Einar Gurholt.

When he talks about "Gunleik" he means Gunleik Mæland, the farmer who runs Rørtveit Gard on the hillside above Flatdal in West Telemark an hour away, and who we have written about on Hanens website previously. Almost all of his meat production, as well as a good deal of dairy products and other goods, goes to Tuddal Høyfjellshotel and Nutheim Gjestgiveri.

– It's a bit funny. He's kind of a farm boy, and I'm a hotel manager, but the whole interaction shows that what we do is so similar. People will think that I walk around wearing a tie and am neat, while he's dirty, but it's not always like that.

Although Einar has a background in fine restaurants in Oslo and Trondheim, the focus is completely different in the mountains. He emphasizes that the food should be good and worth the money. Thanks to the ingredients he gets from Rørtveit and a few other selected suppliers, things go just fine.

– But here people are supposed to be full, after they have often gone on long hikes in the mountains. It is of course very fun to cook to get a Michelin star, but then you have to do it, and it is something completely different from what we do.

– The food you serve is very good, isn't it?

– Yes, right? It should be, but we have a rather small team of only three chefs. I would have liked to have two more, but it's hard to find good people.

A hotel with history in its walls

Tuddal Høyfjellshotel is not a big tourist machine, but a small family-run hotel with history in every plank. It was built in 1895 as a sanatorium, and has an impressive collection of antiques and old furniture that are both on display and used in daily life. Today's host Einar is the fifth generation of the Gurholt family to run the hotel. He has two daughters with his wife Malin, who runs the hotel with him, so the possibility that another generation will run the hotel on the sunny side of Gaustatoppen is definitely present.

The beautiful building in a kind of national romantic dragon style was the brainchild of Supreme Court lawyer Emil Roll. The trend in distinguished urban circles in the second half of the 1800th century was to leave the hustle and bustle and foul smells of the city behind and seek recuperation in untouched nature and fresh mountain air.

One day Roll came walking across Kovstulheia from Tinn, and was literally taken aback by the sight that greeted him. Here he wanted to build his recreation area.

With the help of parish priest Heiberg Lexow, Tuddal opened Högfjelds Sanatorium in 1895, designed by architect Hjalmar Wellhaven. It was not a sanatorium for the sick in need of care, it was a place where the upper class in Kristiania could go for recreation.

The Supreme Court lawyer was no shining talent in finance and went bankrupt several times. In 1910, Tuddal was converted into a hotel, and in 1935 it was sold at auction. The buyers were four investors from Oslo; Olaf Bjerke, Karl August Haraldsen (the father of Queen Sonja), Zakkæus Gurholt and Magnhild Simonsen.

The latter had experience in business operations in Oslo and ran the hotel until 1940. When the Germans invaded the hotel and were going to build a power line from Rjukan to Herøya, Mrs. Simonsen did not want to be involved anymore. She sold her shares to Gurholt, who also bought out the other shareholders.

Zakkæus and his wife Gudrun moved up to Tuddal to run the hotel year-round and kept it running for 31 years before the next generation took over. It is thanks to Gudrun's aesthetic sense and acquisition of beautiful interiors and art that the hotel looks as it does today.

Entering one of Tuddal's 20 rooms is like booking into a museum. Absolutely everywhere you turn you are greeted by furniture that you can't buy at Bohus or Ikea. It's a glimpse into a past that harmonizes well with the hosts' decision not to have televisions in the rooms.

– The idea is that you should come here to do completely different things than watch TV. We encourage guests to read a good book or go for walks in the beautiful landscape, says Malin.

Norway's best hotel with roots in the local community

This is perhaps one of the reasons why Nettavisen's readers voted Tuddal Høyfjellshotel Norway's best hotel last year. Einar and Malin won the award ahead of 19 other nominated hotels, and when first place was a fact, they were clear that it was not solely due to their own efforts.

– Most of all, we would like to thank our amazing team, Malin told the newspaper. – This award is not won by chance – it is the result of hard work, dedication, care and genuine hospitality. Every single employee puts in a formidable effort to create the small and big moments that make your stay something truly special.

That day Hanen is visiting, Ukrainian waitress Tetiana is on her first shift on the restaurant floor, clearly nervous about presenting the menu to the guests. It has not been many months since she and her husband Artem were hired, and barely knew a word of Norwegian. She now performs that job with astonishingly good pronunciation, and from memory. If we are to interpret Tetiana's efforts here as an example of the employees' "formidable efforts", there is little doubt that Malin has a very good point.

– It is very important for us to include people who move here, to get them into work so that they stay in the village. Tetiana and Artem also have children at the Montessori school that we helped start. Without a school in the village, the vitality dies, so everything is connected, says Malin.

The HANENFor us, the food is the main purpose of the visit, which we have traveled to the mountains to talk about. Among other things, Einar and his team have served Telemark cows from Gunleik in Rørtveit. He is one of the very few farmers who work to preserve this breed. There are only 100 such cows grazing today, and Gunleik has 14 of them.

Like Solveig Barstad, who runs Nutheim Gjestgiveri (see separate story), Einar also uses the vegetables of Eldbjørg Lognvik. She is a speech therapist and idealist, who, in addition to her job, grows what vegetables she can, which she delivers to the two hotels.

Being served ingredients like what these two producers provide gives guests an experience of luxury, and is testament to the fact that you don't have to visit Michelin restaurants to eat well. Einar Gurholt knows what he's doing in the kitchen, and has also worked with some of the best.

The fact that he actually became a chef is admittedly an indirect consequence of his desire to run the hotel. He learned from his father that in that case he would have to have another profession besides being a host, which could be used in the hotel.

– I first went to cooking school in Notodden and then apprenticed at Le Canard (which had one Michelin star) in Oslo, which no longer exists.

In the military, Einar was a cook on a submarine, and he then sought his fortune with the controversial chef Kevin Thornton in Dublin at his two-star restaurant.

– I don't know if it was fun exactly, but it was very educational, he says diplomatically. Here Einar gained insight into the hierarchy of the French tradition. It was tough, we learn, but he learned a lot. The next stop was Trondheim where he started working for Heidi Bjerken at her Credo. This was many years before the restaurant received a Michelin star.

– I worked there for three years, and it's probably Heidi that I've learned the most from, at least within what we do here, says Einar.

Many a meal has been prepared by Einar Gurholt since then. He and Malin met in the Caribbean when he was sailing around the world, and they took over the business from Einar's parents Elsa and Rune in 2016. It has been an all-consuming task, while they have had two children and quite spontaneously found a small pocket of time where they could get married in 2023.

A small ecosystem of local food

In a perfect world, Einar would be in the kitchen far more than he is, and out with the producers more, but both are still tasks that the busy hotel director prioritizes as best he can.

– We have kind of created a small network up here, with Eldbjørg growing vegetables for Solveig and me, and Gunleik delivering meat and dairy products to us. This is done outside of all the county municipalities and everyone who makes projects and gets project money and all that stuff. We have been involved in that a thousand times, and nothing ever comes of it. We found out that we are crap at it, and so we just do it ourselves, says Einar happily and elaborates on the scheme:

– What we have told Eldbjørg, who grows vegetables throughout the summer, is that she can grow exactly what she wants, and then we promise to buy it. You have to for this to work, so we do. She grows, and suddenly we get one thing and then another, he says with great satisfaction.

The model is not quite the same with Gunleik Mæland at Rørtveit, but he is also to some extent part of the small ecosystem they have built.

– We have made an internal deal with him that we will not serve any beef that is not Telemark beef. Never. We also have another rule, and that is that all the meat we use must be Norwegian. It is a little more difficult to comply with. This weekend I had some guests who absolutely had to have deer, even though it is not in season, so the closest I could get was Sweden. We sometimes have to cheat a little there, but all the beef we have served for the last four years is Telemark beef from Rørtveit Gard.

Gunleik is also very happy with the situation, and as Einar points out, it works very well. They help each other out when needed, like if Gunleik has a cow he needs to slaughter and Einar "really" doesn't have room. He accepts it anyway.

– It usually goes well, but of course you need to have some freezer capacity. Then you also have to be willing to use all the parts of the animal. That's often where it's lacking for some, but we have now chosen to do that even though it's a bit cumbersome. Then it also becomes a very good collaboration. He also has apple trees, so Solveig and I probably buy all the apple juice he makes, which we then serve for breakfast.

Einar also boasts about Gunleik's pig production.

– Last year we bought five pigs from him, and they roam wild up in the mountains and graze on his farm. It's great quality, and these are happy pigs. That's why we now have ten new hams that we cured ourselves hanging in the barn. He also has sheep for breeding, and every year we buy 30-40 lambs that are made into pork shanks and pork knuckles and lamb roasts and everything, so it's pretty cool.

As Einar points out, Gunleik could have sold to Gilde, but the type of farmer he is thinks it's great that the meat isn't mixed with everything else. He's a "proper" farmer.

– That's what's so cool!

When local elections require a little more

Tuddal Høyfjellshotel also buys milk from Rørtveit, and what Gunleik manages to make of butter is divided between Tuddal and Nutheim.

– We sell a lot of sour cream porridge, so we buy sour cream from him, but he can't deliver all year round. When he has calves, he has to have the milk for them. It's really nice in the summer when we get milk from Gunleik and can tell the breakfast guests that it's his.

The hotel's location also invites other small collaborations. Einar says that he has little capacity to gather even when autumn comes, other than "a few mushrooms, maybe", but that he previously had a cabin neighbor who delivered 40 kilos of mullets every autumn. It happens all the time that they get some "deliveries" of the kind that they like to exchange for a dinner or something like that. That way they get very local mushrooms and berries, one of the obvious advantages of being in the middle of the landscape that Tuddal is.

The hotel is also spared from the large "cabin villages" nearby. Admittedly, the density has increased slightly, but compared to other mountain areas, it's just a small thing. When you wake up in the morning, you have a view of the enigmatic Kovstulvatnet, where a dead pine tree stands in the foreground as if it were a painting by Lars Hertervig. The cabins are scattered throughout the landscape, but not so much that it's a nuisance.

Tuddal is open all year round, and the winter season is of course attractive. The hotel is located in a 70-kilometer ski trail network, and both in the run-up to Christmas (it is closed on Christmas Eve itself), winter holidays and Easter, the kitchen is busy. It is also lively, to say the least, when special "Babette's Feast" weekends are arranged, three times in the autumn. Then the spectacular meal from Karen Blixen's famous short story is recreated.

It is clear that Gunleik and Eldbjørg are the main suppliers to the kitchen, but it goes without saying that they cannot supply everything, and certainly not for Babette's banquet where turtle soup, Russian caviar and quail are part of the menu. There are also limits to how much Einar will brag about the food being local, for various reasons.

– On TripAdvisor, we got slammed once because we claimed to be serving local food, and they couldn't see that it was local. On that particular day, the waitress had mentioned two things on the menu. One was an Italian ham that we had received as a gift the day before from some guests from a winery in Italy. We think that's cool, so we serve that ham and are proud to have received it, and blah-blah-blah, but there is also a story that is important to tell even if the ham is not local. The other thing was saffron. We had a chef from Iran who has unfortunately retired now, but he always had saffron of the highest quality sent up by his brother, says Einar, clarifying that if you have access to that much saffron, you use saffron. Something else should have been chosen.

And here comes the real paradox:

– At the same time, they were served soup with pork from their own storehouse. They got local mountain trout, and they got a lot of other things on the menu that were very local, but that wasn't mentioned. They butchered us because here there was saffron and Italian hams, and we claimed that we were doing local food. Everything else on the menu comes as a matter of course, that the vegetables are from Eldbjørg and so on and so forth, but they didn't mention that because that wasn't the story they wanted to tell.

Einar probably lives very well with the fact that not everyone likes his food, but here it was obvious that the agenda was to be cool. Then it would be different.

– Then at least I'll take care of it. I get upset, and think, why do you bother writing like that? That's why I'm a little cautious about putting ourselves in that situation so people can take advantage of us. Sometimes you have to use chives from Kenya in the winter because that's where it comes from. Some people get it in other ways, but then they've collected and dried it and spent a lot of money and resources on it. It's nice, but we can't afford to do that.

When guests eat, they contribute to more than just a meal

The moral, however, is very simple.

– You have to be proud of what is local, and what is good, especially when you have a close collaboration with such nice people as Eldbjørg and Gunleik. We like to show that we have done a job, but we also want to show that just as much work has been done on that side. “Now you are sitting here eating, the menu may cost 950 kroner and you may think that is a lot of money, but at the same time you are supporting Gunleik, who has three children, and she who lives a little further down the valley has one son. You contribute a lot to keeping the local community alive here, and that is super important – and it is not expensive.”

It may be a little more expensive for the hotelier and chef at Tuddal to choose local suppliers as he does, but he is clear about why.

– It's a choice you make, and it's a choice the guests make when they come and eat here. We think it's cool to contribute to that, concludes Einar Zakkæus Gurholt.