One street, three Steep Picks.
Issue 10
Every venue we've reviewed in Oslo is a Steep Pick. Three of them sit within an eighteen-minute walk of each other, and one is on the World's 50 Best Bars list.
Oslo in early morning has a specific kind of light. Flat, pale, coming in sideways well past sunrise, the kind of light that makes a shopfront window look like it's trying to tell you something. Thorvald Meyers gate at half past eight is quiet in the way Scandinavian streets get quiet. Not empty. Unhurried, like the whole city agreed to wait a beat before starting.
Supreme Roastworks is on the corner, and you can see the roaster through the glass before you're anywhere near the door.
Every venue we have reviewed in this city is a Steep Pick. We have never said that about anywhere else.
A city with no misses
Oslo's catalog on steep is small compared to Tokyo's or Bangkok's. It is also, right now, a hundred percent Steep Picks. Every single venue we have reviewed in this city cleared the bar.
That is not how it usually works. A bigger scene produces range: a few exceptional rooms, a lot of solid ones, the occasional disappointing cup in between. Oslo's density comes from something narrower. A World Barista Champion. A World Brewers Cup competitor. A bar that shows up on the 50 Best list most years running. When the people qualified to set the bar are also the people behind the counter, there is not much room left for the middle tier to exist.
Supreme Roastworks
Supreme sits right on the corner of Thorvald Meyers gate, the roasting equipment visible through the glass before you have even ordered. The person behind the counter has won a World Brewers Cup, and it shows in a filter programme that tastes considered rather than routine. Order the croissant with your first cup. You will not regret it, and you will not have time to regret the bench seating, which has no cushioning and lets you know after about an hour.
Tim Wendelboe
Three minutes up the block is one of the most internationally consequential addresses in specialty coffee. Tim Wendelboe won the World Barista Championship in 2004 and has spent the two decades since sourcing directly from his own farm in Colombia and from smallholders in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Honduras. The room is a handful of stools and a counter, nothing built to distract from what's in the cup. Order the espresso first. The staff will tell you the harvest year without being asked.
- 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
Walk south out of Grünerløkka and into Sentrum, eighteen minutes if you don't stop for anything, and you're at Storgata 27, inside a 19th-century building HIMKOK turned into a distillery, a greenhouse, and one of the best bars in Scandinavia. This is a World's 50 Best Bars regular, built on aquavit and gin distilled on the premises with Nordic botanicals most cocktail menus never go near. Order the Apricot & Bun and read the description again after you've finished it. You'll want to.
The pattern, if there is one
We can't make this claim about every city we cover. It happens to be true about this one, on this street, right now: three venues, three world-championship-level operators, zero misses.
The situation pick
Start at Supreme Roastworks before nine. Walk the three minutes to Tim Wendelboe for a second cup you didn't plan on having. Spend the day however you want, then be at HIMKOK by six, before the seats at the bar fill in. One street, effectively, and every stop on it already cleared a bar most cities can't clear once.
On our radar
All three venues are reviewed on steep with full scores, and the walking route between them is already built as a standalone itinerary if you'd rather follow a map than an email. Oslo's catalog is small right now, deliberately so. If there's a fourth stop we're missing, reply and tell us.