Olso, Norway
I traveled to the Land of the Midnight Sun to visit relatives and also enjoy dinner at the recently awarded three Michelin star restaurant, Maaemo. It is a small, eight table restaurant overlooking the main train station (read: tracks) of Oslo; not the grandest of views (although you do get a good look at the Barcode Project, aka Skyscraper City). But, as anyone who has traveled in Norway knows, their cities offer their least spectacular views (and believe me, there are some lovely city views). I’m really here for the food. The chef, Esben Holmboe Bang is from Denmark but moved to Norway after meeting and marrying a Norwegian. His cooking style falls in the New Nordic category, made famous by Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer of Noma fame.
Our dinner was comprised of twenty courses, many the size of a bite or two. It started with a wonderful buttery cookie with a savory chanterelle mousse and continued with a Jerusalem artichoke “dip”, then a cornett with roasted yeast and vendace roe, langoustine served on a chicken skin “cracker”, fermented trout in leek cream, and a Mahogany clam (As a side note, Noma served a Mahogany clam as well, that I did not care for, but this one was prepared with a very fine dice along with seaweed and shiitake mushrooms with a heavenly broth). Our final starting “bite” course is pictured above. This is an oyster preserved in a gel with a warm mussel dill sauce. It was a delicious dish and I absolutely loved the presentation (a clear glass globe, indented to form a bowl, allowing for the sea atmosphere to be visible through the dish).
The next few dishes were a little larger and started with tender raw slices of scallop with smoked cream, white current and heather. Then a scallop was grilled in its shell and served with apples and celeriac. A healthy sized langoustine tail was served on a bed of pine and prepared with pickled pine and rapeseed oil. Next we were served the bread course of Norwegian lompe (a soft flatbread made with potatoes and wheat flour) served with two different spreads: salted sheep’s milk butter and whipped pork fat with pork belly crisps. This isn’t the first restaurant I’ve been to that has adopted the habit of a bread course and this American girl finds it a tad annoying just because I would have loved to have a little bread to soak up some of the fabulous sauces I had before and after this course (I remember a dinner at Atera in NYC where the bread came just before the mains and it was so delicious but such a bummer that my spoon had not done near as well at getting some of the earlier drippings). We then had a wonderfully seared turbot with black garlic foam and topped with caviar. The above middle photo shows the turbot prior to plating when the chef brought it down from the kitchen to describe the cooking process. Next a traditional Norwegian porridge called rømmegrøt (very sour cream) served with finely diced dried and smoked reindeer heart and topped with a plum vinegar. I’m not a huge fan of organ meat (besides sweetbreads and foie gras) but this was really delicious. The next course was charred onions and quail egg gently cooked in roasted bone marrow, aged fenalår (salted, dried, cured leg of lamb) and onion vinaigrette with lemon thyme. The last main dish (pictured on the right) is roasted duck from Drangedal, lavender, honey and winter truffle. This was also served with a side of smoked duck heart with a fabulous Bearnaise-like sauce.
Dessert started with a cheese course: frozen blue cheese with pickled black trumpet mushrooms. Next we sweetened up with grilled winter pear from Hardanger, summer preserves and the restaurant’s own autumn honey. The next dessert course was the restaurant’s signature dish: brown butter ice cream, molasses and roasted hazelnuts. The sauce that is poured over the ice cream forms a tiny bit of a shell. It was quite perfect. Their liquid waffle looked like a light brown flake-covered dessert truffle. The meal ended with roasted grain and strawberry bar and brown goat cheese tart.
After having a bad experience at Noma, but very good ones at Kadeau, Relae and Amass and two excellent ones at Geranium, this dinner at Maaemo has confirmed for me that I do, in fact, like New Nordic cuisine. It will probably be more difficult to land a seat here now that it has been awarded a third star and that it only has eight tables to fill, but it is worth the effort!
Food Travel & Me 