Underwater restaurant opens in Norway

BAALY, Norway — Europe's first underwater restaurant is opening in Norway with more than 7,000 customers already booked to eat among the fish and seaweed.

Situated on the southern tip of Norway, the restaurant looks like a large concrete tube partly submerged in the North Sea. It is called Under, which also means "wonder" in Norwegian.

The structure was designed by the Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta, which also created the opera house in Oslo and the National 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York.

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Entering Under initially feels like going into a sauna, as wooden planks cover its upper section. But the 26-foot flight of stairs leads down to a large dining area that seats about 40 guests, walled by a gigantic transparent window to the ocean.

The restaurant is laid out so there are minimal reflections in the glass wall, which fills the room with natural light during the day, filtered by the greenish color of the water.

A full 18-course meal, based on local ingredients and seafood, can set you back some $430 per person, including drinks.

"I think in the end it's probably about the fact that it is an underwater restaurant, but also an underwater research center. So the architecture that we've created starts above water and ends under water in a pipe-like concrete structure. I think the fascination is just this movement from above water to underwater, through the building when the big window actually exposes the underwater world - not like an aquarium - but the real thing," said Kjetil Traedal.

There are only a handful of underwater restaurants around the world, mainly found in tropical waters like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

NBC/RTV