Every venue we've reviewed in Oslo is a Steep Pick. That has never happened anywhere else.
City Guide · 3 min read
Three specialty venues reviewed in Oslo. All three are Steep Picks, and all three are run by people with an actual world championship behind them. Here is a city where the middle tier never got a chance to exist.
Oslo's most famous coffee export is not sitting in this guide. Fuglen opened in 1963 as a furniture-and-coffee shop in the city center, and decades later it became one of the reasons Nordic filter coffee has a global reputation at all. It is also, by pure coincidence, already on this site: Fuglen Tokyo, the Shibuya outpost, is a Steep Pick review a few clicks from here.
What we have actually reviewed inside Oslo itself is smaller, and on paper, more remarkable. Three venues. All three Steep Picks.
Every specialty venue we have reviewed in Oslo is a Steep Pick. We cannot say that about any other city on the site.
Three for three
That is not a coincidence built on a small sample size being generous. It is a coincidence built on who happens to be running the counter. Tim Wendelboe won the World Barista Championship in 2004 and has spent two decades since sourcing direct-trade beans from his own Colombian farm. Supreme Roastworks, three doors down, is run by a World Brewers Cup competitor roasting on the premises. HIMKOK, an eighteen-minute walk south in Sentrum, is a recurring name on the World's 50 Best Bars list, distilling its own aquavit and gin from Nordic botanicals.
A bigger city's specialty scene accumulates unevenly: a few standouts, a lot of adequate rooms in between. Oslo's three-venue catalog skipped the adequate part entirely, because everyone in it was already operating at a world-championship level before they opened anything.
The two on Thorvald Meyers gate
Supreme Roastworks and Tim Wendelboe sit close enough together in Grünerløkka that you could visit both before deciding which coffee you actually wanted. Supreme's roasting equipment is visible through the shopfront glass, and the espresso underneath it tastes like someone who competes nationally pulled it. Tim Wendelboe's room is smaller and more spare, just a counter and a few stools, and the staff will tell you the harvest year on request. Order a coffee at each. The difference between them is the most interesting five minutes on the whole street.
- Supreme Roastworks Steep PickGrünerløkka · Oslo · Steep Index 8.4/10
The working roastery behind the counter is the first thing you notice, and the espresso that follows is the reason you will come back every morning you are in Oslo.
- Tim Wendelboe Steep PickGrünerløkka · Oslo · Steep Index 8.6/10
The 2004 World Barista Champion runs this small Grünerløkka espresso bar with direct-trade beans from his own Colombian farm, and every cup reflects that level of care.
- HIMKOK Steep PickStorgata · Oslo · Steep Index 8.8/10
A World's 50 Best Bar with an on-site distillery, an award-winning interior carved out of a 19th-century Oslo building, and cocktails that make a serious case for Nordic ingredients.
HIMKOK, after dark
Walk south into Sentrum and HIMKOK is waiting inside a converted 19th-century building, complete with an on-site distillery and a greenhouse. It earns its 50 Best ranking on ingredients rather than spectacle: house-made aquavit, gin, and vodka built from Nordic botanicals most cocktail menus never touch. Go for the Apricot & Bun and stay for the fact that it is, somehow, still the least surprising thing about this list.
What a small scene proves
Oslo is not trying to out-produce Tokyo or Bangkok, and its three-venue catalog on steep will not pretend otherwise. What it proves instead is narrower and more useful: when a scene is built by people who already set the bar internationally, there is no room left for the middle tier to exist. Fuglen started that reputation six decades ago. Wendelboe, Supreme, and HIMKOK are the reason it has not slipped since.