2013: My Ten Dishes of the Year

It may well be the second week of January 2014, but I'm not quite done with 2013 yet. Continuing my tradition of looking back at the most memorable restaurant dishes I had over the year. I thought I'd give you the run down of the ten best things I ate in a restaurant in 2013. I planned to publish this last month but, you know, stuff happened to conspire otherwise. In fact, looking back at the year it was a pretty thin one for the blog. I had some cracking meals, but never got round to writing all the stuff I wanted to. So, New Year's resolution No. 1 is to try and post a bit more often.

Anyway, in reverse order the ten best things I ate in a restaurant in 2013 are: 

Nydalen Bryggeri & Spiseri, Oslo – Restaurant Review

Over the last year or so Oslo has seen some great new restaurant openings. Although there's still a long way to go before Oslo catches up with its Scandinavian neighbours, it's finally starting to feel like Oslo is getting a restaurant scene befitting its status as Norway's capital. One very recent addition to the city's dining scene is Nydalen Bryggeri & Spiseri that opened in Oslo's Nydalen neighbourhood in August 2013.

Running Nydalen Bryggeri are the team behind Oslo's Amundsen Brewery who have turned the site of a former Bølgen & Moi restaurant into a vast temple to zythology (yeah, I had to look that one up too), serving a wide variety of beers as well as robust fare for lunch and dinner, with many of the dishes made with their own beer.

Fauna, Oslo – Restaurant Review

When Oslo's Oscarsgate shut its doors for good at the end of last year, a collective sigh of disappointment could be heard from the city's food lovers. Not only had the Norwegian capital lost another of its precious few Michelin-starred restaurant, but it was also unclear as to when or where we'd see Swedish head chef Björn Svensson in a kitchen again.

The demise of the Oscarsgate was fairly abrupt. In September 2011 the restaurant announced that it was looking for new, larger premises – not a bad thing at all given the old Oscarsgate dining room was of a size that even the slickest of estate agents would euphemistically call 'cosy.' It was indeed minuscule, and you were forever being bumped by passing waiters and moving your chair to allow someone at the neighbouring table to go to the loo. But the food; oh the food! Svensson's cooking combined an eclectic mix of Norwegian produce that was reconstructed in a vibrant, modern way, clearly drawing on his experience from stints at El Bulli and Gordon Ramsay's Royal Hospital Road.

Smalhans, Oslo – Restaurant Review

Smalhans has been on my radar since they opened in late 2012. The thought of a small neighbourhood restaurant serving a weekly-changing menu of no-nonsense dishes at a very agreeable price should have been enough to immediately pique anyone's interest. I kept on hearing good things about this restaurant and I kept meaning to go but, you know, stuff got in the way. And after my first meal there recently, I'm kicking myself for not going sooner. Better late than never, I guess, because Smalhans is utterly fantastic!

Taste of China, Oslo – Restaurant Review

One of the things I miss most about living in London is the sheer variety of global cuisine on offer. Whether it's a bowl of steaming hot phở, a garlicky hummus Beiruti with freshly baked flat bread, or some fiercely spiced jerk chicken. In London, it seems, you can have it all, and usually at a price that won't break the bank.

But perhaps the thing I miss most is my tradition of Sunday dim sum; it's what Sundays were made for in my opinion. Wake up late (we're talking pre kids here), grab my favourite section of The Sunday Times, head over to Royal China on Baker Street and settle in with some green tea while contemplating the array of steamed delights on offer.

Oud Sluis, Sluis – Restaurant Review

Sergio Herman doesn't look like your average Michelin-starred chef. That intense, somewhat ill-tempered demeanour is there – the one often typical of people that strive daily for absolute perfection in their craft. As is the precise and confident way he moves in the kitchen while barking out orders from the pass. No, it's something else that seems to be at odds with my mental image of 'Michelin-starred chef.'

Tanned and sporting a six o'clock shadow, his angular features with piercing hazel eyes give him more the look of a Hollywood matinée idol, while a fashion model/TV presenter wife completes the picture. His self-published multimedia "art-object-book," 'Sergiology,' "relates to everything that made me what I am today," and he even has his own magazine, 'Sergio,' where you can read articles about Sergio's childhood and what he likes to eat and drink during the day (a jitter-inducing eight espressos if you're interested).

Maaemo, Oslo – Restaurant Review (Aug '13)

Another look at Maaemo, you say? I know, I've already written plenty about this, the most glittering of Oslo's Michelin-starred restaurants, so what's left to be said, right? Well, having first eaten at Maaemo just after they opened almost three years ago I've simply been amazed at how each and every meal there has moved the game forward – an interpretation of Norwegian terroir unlike anything I've seen before.

Certainly there's no sign of Maaemo resting on the laurels of the two Michelin stars they were awarded just 15 months after opening. It's full steam ahead and the pace of development in the kitchen is breathtaking. It's therefore perhaps interesting to reflect on how the trajectory of head chef and co-owner Esben Holmboe Bang's cooking has progressed since three guys got together with the idea of opening Norway's first fine-dining restaurant based solely on organic or bio-dynamic produce.

La Grenouillère, La Madeleine-sous-Montreuil – Restaurant Review

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of French haute cuisine are greatly exaggerated. In fact, it would appear that the upper echelons of French cooking are alive and well and capable of producing modern, inventive, and exciting food. Behold exhibit 'A' for the defence: the mesmerising and wilfully eccentric La Grenouillère in La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil.

Maaemo, Oslo – Restaurant Review (Jan '13)

(A more recent review of Maaemo can be found here)

Regular readers of my blog (hello, Mum) will know that I am more than somewhat enamoured by this utterly captivating restaurant. Indeed, Maaemo has been the location for some of the greatest meals of my life, and since it opened just over two years ago its food has unequivocally topped my annual list of the 10 Best Restaurant Dishes.

Inn i Granskauen — An Evening in the Norwegian Forest

The instructions in the email were intriguingly vague. "Take the subway at 18:06 from Oslo Central Station all the way to Voksenkollen" – some twenty stops and 500 vertical metres away, and roughly where the compact urban-ness of Oslo gives way to the vast expanse of wooded hills that is Oslomarka.

Oslomarka is the Norwegian capital's playground. It's here where impressively fit Osloites come to walk, cycle and ski and generally rekindle their bond with nature, a bond that seems to be so deeply ingrained in the Norwegian DNA. But tonight the 30 people huddled in the train carriage are in for a different sort of experience. We're here for a very special culinary adventure indeed.

...read the full article on Food Studio's website here.

2012: My Ten Dishes of the Year

Another year draws to a close and yet again I'm left wondering where all the time has gone (probably spent in restaurants judging by this post I'm sure you're thinking). Anyway, I thought I'd continue my tradition of looking back at the most memorable restaurant dishes I had over the year. I've been really lucky enough to have indulged in some epic meals this year, the highlights of which have undoubtedly been experiencing the truly magical Fäviken for the first time, a return to Noma and The Ledbury, and of course Oslo's sublime Maaemo.

So, in reverse order here is a list of the ten best things I ate in a restaurant in 2012:

Fäviken Magasinet, Järpen – Restaurant Review

A late afternoon in November, somewhere in Sweden, and already the inky black swathe of sky seems to envelop the rental car tightly. Two narrow yellow beams from the headlights carve out our path through the gloom over the treacherously icy roads of this mountain plateau. It's captivating, hypnotic even; the dull rumble of tyre over ice, the ghostly soft glow from the dashboard, the car seemingly piloting itself. You see, a trip to Fäviken doesn't seem so much of a journey as a pilgrimage. For what else could a jaunt to eat at a restaurant just 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle be? And, like all the best experiences in life, I never saw this one coming.

Von Porat, Oslo – Restaurant Review [Now Closed]

Typical, isn't it? You wait ages in the freezing cold for a bus and then two come along at once. And so seems to be the case for the Oslo food scene. Restaurant von Porat and Oslo's shiny new food hall, Mathallen, where it is located are two such examples. Already, in the two short months the restaurant has been open I can see it (and the food hall) becoming an established favourite for the capital's food lovers.

Noma, Copenhagen (revisited) – Restaurant Review

Just over two years ago I had a culinary epiphany. The event that led to this was dinner at Noma. It took me a while to process my thoughts on my meal there, but on that July night as I walked away from the old warehouse in Copenhagen's Christianshavn, I had this strange lightness of step and giddy excitement, like some spotty teenager with a newfound crush. But this wasn't to be a holiday fling, I promised myself, it was the real deal, we'd keep in touch. I vowed to come back.

So much for good intentions for it would be over two years until I returned. Courtesy of a kind invitation from Arve at Starve – "would you like to eat at Noma with us?" he asked; a question that could only possibly have one answer – I found myself standing outside that same mottled stone building looking out over the cold waters of the canal. A little flutter of butterflies in my stomach betrayed my concern. Would it be just as good as I remembered? Or was that meal one of those rare moments where the right stars aligned at the right time to create something utterly magical, never to be repeated. What if it was just a fling? How had time changed my Noma experience?

Food Studio x Maaemo x Tim Wendelboe

“The river flows in the rear of the towns, and we see all things from a new and wilder side. 

The fields and gardens come down to it with a frankness, and freedom from pretension, which they do not wear on the highway.” 

― Henry David Thoreau

There's the whisper of a chill in the Oslo air these days. The nights are drawing in and the leaves on the trees are just starting to give up their chlorophyll green. Autumn's here, and with it will soon come the bracing cold and frost. It's not quite here yet, but you know it's in the post, that's for sure. So I thought I'd take a fond look back at a unique event, held when the nights were longer and the air was warmer and long lazy dinners under the sky were the order of the day. For on that July night, in the middle of urban Oslo, a small secluded spot on the banks of Oslo's meandering Akerselva river played host to a very special evening indeed.

Sushi Tetsu, London – Restaurant Review

I could save you some time and just say that if you're after the best sushi experience in London then go to Sushi Tetsu and be done with it. But where would be the fun in that? This tiny restaurant in an obscure Clerkenwell alleyway is serving up some of the most authentic sushi I've had outside of Japan.

Sushi Tetsu quietly opened in June 2012 and is the creation of Toru Takahashi and his wife Harumi. In just a couple of short months the restaurant has received near reverent praise from many quarters. Such is the minuscule size of Sushi Tetsu (just seven stools surround its blonde wooden counter) that many dare not even speak its name for fear that the restaurant will be fully booked in perpetuity. But it would be a shame to keep such a wonderful place a closely guarded secret. If you love the precision, theatre and ritual of authentic Japanese sushi then a pilgrimage to Sushi Tetsu is a must.

Viajante, London – Restaurant Review

I was recently in London to embark on what can only be described as an epic week of eating. Over five days my fellow travelling companions and I ate at eight different restaurants with eight Michelin stars between them (reviews to follow, eventually). The damage to my waistline (and wallet) notwithstanding, it was a fantastic and truly memorable trip and confirmed to me just how exciting the food scene in London is right now. One of the highlights of the trip has to have been a monumentally good lunch at Viajante.

Maaemo, Oslo – Restaurant Review (Jun '12)

(More recent reviews of Maaemo can be found here and here)

That's right folks, this is a look at another meal at Oslo's magnificent Maaemo. I've already written plenty about this restaurant so I'll try and keep this one fairly brief and let the photos do most of the talking. If you want to know more about this ground-breaking two Michelin-starred restaurant that uses only organic/bio-dynamic produce, then pour yourself a glass or three of something nice and read my previous reviews from Feb '11, May '11, Aug '11, Oct '11, Mar '12, and Apr '12.

Mirazur, Menton – Restaurant Review

Perched on a sun-drenched hillside almost straddling the French/Italian border is Mirazur, a jewel of a restaurant with achingly gorgeous views over the azure blue waters of the Mediterranean. It's not often I have a deep, genuine longing to return to a restaurant – there always seems to be somewhere new to try – yet after one incredible lunch at Mirazur, which bordered on perfection, I find myself physically pining for another visit to this remarkable place.

Le Louis XV, Monte-Carlo – Restaurant Review

I was recently in Monaco to indulge in one of my favourite things, namely watching insanely fast cars drive round a track. And when the Formula 1 circus comes to town, there's no better place to watch it than in Monte-Carlo, where the absurd speed and noise of these machines is in stark contrast to the perilously narrow and usually genteel streets of the Principality.

I'd taken an early morning flight from Oslo and was due to meet up with some friends travelling from London on a later flight. So, I landed at Nice airport at noon without a clue as to what I'd do to pass the five hours until the rest of the gang arrived. Of course, with my other passion being food I found myself in the baggage hall hesitantly telephoning the three Michelin-starred Le Louis XV restaurant in Monte-Carlo's Hôtel de Paris to enquire if they possibly, maybe, pretty please had a table for one available for lunch in an hour. The answer, to my amazement, was yes.