The cafe and restaurant scene is in constant development in Nuuk. A new eatery, Ivalu Restaurant & Bar, with Martin Heilmann Kristensen at the helm, has now opened in the heart of Greenland’s capital.
– It is our biggest investment ever, says Martin Heilmann Kristensen to Sermitsiaq.
The cafe and restaurant scene is in constant development in Nuuk. A new eatery, Ivalu Restaurant & Bar, with Martin Heilmann Kristensen at the helm, has now opened in the heart of Greenland’s capital.
– It is our biggest investment ever, says Martin Heilmann Kristensen to Sermitsiaq.
He is the main owner of Kammak Company ApS, which owns Nuuk’s Ivalu Restaurant & Bar. He keeps the price of the investment a secret.
The new eatery on the city’s short stretch of Naapittarfik, which connects the two streets Aqqusinersuaq and Imaneq, has a central location in Nuuk.
Every day, many hundreds of people pass Naapittarfik, Ivalu Restaurant & Bar, which is not difficult to spot. The eatery has moved into the distinctive blue building as a neighbor to Brugseni in the city centre, where the board was housed for a period.
Southern European bistro with Scandinavian cafe
The opening of Ivalu Restaurant & Bar took place on Wednesday 30 September in the wake of the final regulatory approvals being in place.
The company has invested a million in furnishing the building at Naapittarfik 2 into a trendy eatery with a restaurant, cafe and bar.
As mentioned, the Kammak Company stands behind the restaurant. The company’s owners are a Greenlandic-Danish team led by the passionate and businessman who lives in Qaqortoq.
He has sold 30 percent of the shares in Kammak Company to four experienced business people with relevant backgrounds. Martin Heilmann Kristensen thus still owns 70 percent of the company, which makes him Kammak’s main shareholder.
Martin Heilmann Kristensen says about Ivalu Restaurant & Bar:
– The restaurant market in Nuuk is so mature that it is ready for the next level in terms of food and decor. We have created a southern European bistro combined with modern Scandinavian cafe architecture.
– The atmosphere will be international. We have furnished the dining area with a mix of classic French and modern cafe chairs and joinery-produced wooden dining tables.
Open in the evening to start with
To begin with, the eatery is only open in the evening. This is how it is until the entire personnel situation is in place and the employees are fully trained.
It will then be opened from lunchtime. For lunch, the menu will offer everything from salads to the classic burger and pizza, while the menu changes character in the evening, so that southern European dishes are also served with a focus on long-term cold-raised quality pizzas, says Martin Heilmann Kristensen.
When it comes to the building that Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq built in 2010 as Nuuk’s point of sale for Greenlandic provisions, the board, it only had a lifespan of half a dozen years.
Since then, the building with the curved roof and large glass facades has been empty, except for a period as a test center during the corona era.
The neighbor, Kalaallit Nunaanni Brugseni, bought the municipal building in a tender round in 2022, but the retail chain’s plans for the site never came to fruition. Now Ivalu Restaurant & Bar has occupied the premises, i.e. 250 square meters on the ground floor and first floor. Kammak Company has leased the entire property from KNB (Brugseni).
In addition to being the main owner of Kammak Company, Martin Heilmann Kristensen is the managing director. Kammak already stands i.a. behind the Kûnguak cafes in Qaqortoq and Sisimiut.
In Sisimiut, Kammak also has a hostel, while the company, together with a group of investors in Qaqortoq, has advanced plans to build a larger hotel in Qaqortoq.
A pity about the closure of the small, well-visited cafe in Nuuk
The other day, the small well-visited Kammak Kûnguak Cafe in the old colonial harbor in Nuuk has been closed. It happened when the landlord wants to convert the lease into an office.
– We think it is incredibly unfortunate that the city is losing this little pearl, which has been a great asset for the area, as it has given the whole city and many of the city’s tourists a good experience of going to the colonial harbor and enjoying a good time in the historical surroundings, he says.
While Martin Heilmann Kristensen is the main owner of Kammak Company, the company’s other owners include Søren Heilmann and Lars Christiansen. They became co-owners of the company in the spring. Søren Heilmann, who lives in Gentofte, is, among other things, chairman, founder and co-owner of WePlayAgain, which deals in used golf equipment.
