A hotel with history and plenty of good food in Oslo

This post is the third about our Oslo trip, in it first post you can read about what we came up with during the days and in it Other you can read about an exciting cultural and food tour in Grünerløkka.

During our days in Oslo, we stayed at the ancient Hotel Bristol just a few blocks from Karl Johan. The hotel opened in 1920 and was then the only hotel in Norway with cold and hot water in the room. In 1939, the so-called Oslo Report containing information about the Germans' weapons and strategies against Great Britain was written by a German physicist who lived at the hotel. Shortly afterwards, in connection with the occupation of Norway, the hotel was also occupied by the Germans, who used the hotel for the rest of the war. Furthermore, Churchill is said to have stayed at Bristol during his visit to Oslo. So a lot has happened here and you can really feel the wings of history in the hotel, which is also very beautiful.

I, who am a real breakfast person, really thought that the breakfast was the very best thing about the hotel. Here there was everything you could want for the hungry and everything was served in the beautiful Vinterhaven salon. It was probably the best hotel breakfast I've ever had. Hotel Bristol is otherwise famous for its Afternoon tea with hot chocolate, we'll have to save that for a rough autumn day because we will definitely come back here.

For dinner the first evening, we were hungry for something Asian and ended up at Hanami, a Japanese restaurant right next to Tjuvholmen. With a view of the fjord and beautifully served dishes, we had a fantastically pleasant first evening. As you can see from the pictures below, the dishes are not entirely traditional Japanese but a bit modernized, but really, really good.

With the wallet drained already on the first evening (yes, Oslo is expensive, sometimes really expensive), we set out in search of mixed food experiences. With ice cream prices at around a hundred, we didn't keep up our usual coffee pace, but sure enough, one or two treats still went down. For example, we found the patisserie Pascal which specialized in macaroons and pralines, here we got an ice cream with macaroons on it, super delicious!

Another fantastic coffee shop is Spoken words with hand-brewed coffee and delicious doughnuts. Talor Browne previously worked for the barista Tim Wendelboe but started her own and then decided to serve donuts in addition to good coffee, she reasoned, you can't drink coffee without coffee. A very wise decision! You can find Talormade in several places in Oslo, including right behind the Munch Museum.

On the last day, we wanted a solid lunch so that we would survive the journey home and ended up on Eataly at Aker brygge. They have placed highly in several national and international pizza championships and we tried two of their competition pizzas, a classic Margherita and a pizza with truffle and prosciutto. Being the truffle lover that I am, I thought the truffle pizza was a real highlight. Incidentally, they have another truffle pizza on their winning menu, so there may be a return visit here as well.

As you probably understood by now, we are very fond of Italian food, so a dinner at an Italian restaurant had to be the last evening in Oslo. We headed to Bass Social for a real fallow dinner. Their specialty is tasting menus, but you can also order from a regular a la carte menu. A traditional Italian dinner consists of several parts, antipasti, primi, secondi and so on, but here they had taken approximately the same type of dishes but created a tasting menu instead. You could choose from 10 or 13 dishes, we felt satisfied with 10. For the menu you could also buy a well-matched wine package. A very nice restaurant with good food and good service, and surprisingly reasonably priced. The only catch was that the restaurant had no outdoor seating, only the bar had seats outside. However, it was no problem to have the dessert served at the bar. By the way, the dessert is the one you see in the picture at the beginning of the post. Very good, but my favorite was the risotto ball with truffle.

So we didn't go hungry in Oslo either, here there were plenty of food experiences. Those who missed the Norwegian delicacies can read more about them here, because of course we tried both brown cheese and whale meat during our trip. I'm glad it was just a taste though, it was quite enough. 🙂