It kind of hurts me not to give this place 5 stars, half of me feels like it deserves 5 stars and for many people it will be a 5 star experience, but not for me.
The location is almost perfect, between Grønland and Tøyen metro/underground/subway stop. A quiet little street, but not hard to find, perfect for a spring day, when you can walk down after your meal tipsy on wine.
The actual place has nice lighting, it's not too big or too small, open kitchen with one station next to the tables and one station further in, a little more hidden away. I was there on a special wine night; all the wine served was produced by one of two people, one french and one Spanish. I therefore don't feel like it would be fair to say much about the wine they serve her on a general basis, the wine I was served was however interesting. I started with a really fresh pink sparking wine (in the middle of it's fermentation process), it kind of reminded me of my grandfather's homemade wine as it feels really thick and almost rough, but still fresh and sweet. I than had a red wine, the server first tried to give me a red wine from the Spanish farm, but I found it lacking aftertaste and went for one by the French lady. This wine was amazing and told a story, something I like to pretend to understand. I finished with a French dessert wine, that is a special type of wine that gets it's flavour from the lack of oxygen as a result of a Mold layer on top of the wine, also this wine was great if you ask me. Sidenote; the sour beer was great too, if you are not a wine type of gal/guy. All the wine sold at Brutus is "nature wine" (natur vin), meaning that the main ingredient (for most the wines the only ingredient) is the grape, with some wine having some natural sulfur to start the process. The problem with this is that it's really hard to control the wine, and the taste and quality often will vary from Bach to Bach. On the upside; little to no hungover.
We had 6 or 7 glasses of wine at the table and it ended up at costing about 1500 kr, it's expensive, but this might be as a result of the special wine night I happened to attend, And also that means each glass of wine was between 220 and 250 kroner, witch is not all that bad oslo considering.
Now the food, I was a little shocked to see that there was nothing else on the menu than the five course they had prepared, now that is not necessary a bad thing, as this assures you only get the best food they have, and often means the food is especially fresh and good at this specific time. We were two meat eaters and one vegetarian, I would call or in some way tell them before arrival about any specific allergies or diet as there is little room for making specific food when you are there.
The vegaterian food was pretty much the same as the meat dices, but the meat was replaced with some kind of vegetarian alternative.
Our five course consistent of:
1. Chicken liver and duck hearts
2. Raw-shrimp and smoked sour cream
3. Cold Melvin
4. Warm Melvin
4.5. We ordered some cheese here
5. Milk and kleina
Now that does not tell you a lot about the actual dish and how it is prepared, very minimalistic and all, I personally think that was fun and cool, as you can not order anything else anyways but some might find this irritating. Just so you get an idea; Melvin=name of a cow we ate, milk=ice-cream, kleina=doughnut ish cake.
Now you might ask yourself "dude, this sounds great, why the three star review?" This is simply because the food was not all that great, simple as that. The liver and hearts were too heavy and filling and would benefit from some freshness or sourness contrasting that filling taste of liver. I personally liked the cold shrimp, or the sour cream was really fun, but they had some caviar on top that didn't taste like anything so that was a little unnecessary. The Melvins, I just don't want to know the name of the animal that died for my pleasure, I probably should think that is a good thing but I didn't like that. The cheese was amazing, like actually crazy good but 120 kroners for only a few slides, it was a comté that was 24 months so totally worth it, just yeah great stuff. The dessert was okay, sweet, the cake was warm, witch was a great touch. The problem I had with all of this food was that it was that all the food had ether pickled something in there or a majonese/egg based sauce. So ether super sour or the filling, or just I don't know, lots of egg. Almost all the food would benefit from an contrasting element, the Melvin would also really need some salt. And the vegetarian option was nowere as creative as it should be, I feel a little bad about the three stars, it is a fun place but it didn't meet expectations.
One could always ask for some salt I guess, but it feels a little insulting to ask. read more
