Oslo Street Food — Restaurant in Oslo

tl;dr definitely worth trying. Food is good, and you get a lot of food for the price.

Detail: I only ordered from this place initially to write a review here. I was annoyed partly by the name “kimchi” (I am of the opinion that restaurants shouldn’t be allowed to name themselves “omakase,” “dinner,” and etc) and partly from other reviewers saying it is “authentic.” I have seen (in US) many ethnic restaurants that fall for the “authenticity” trap where there aren’t enough clientele if you sell exactly what you sell in your home country, but you get complaints that it is not “authentic” if you localize.

Given this long background, I was actually surprised at how little localization their food went through. Everything I had today (kimchi duruchigi, kimchi jeon/pancake, and kimchi) can be sold in Korea without any adjustments. They use the proper gochugaru (red chili powder), proper cut of meat (not these I-am-worried-about-my-health mystery cheap meat you get at some kebab/thai places in Oslo), and the correct type of rice. Perhaps this should be taken as a minimum, but I have seen kantine at work use the “tex-mex” spice mix to make Korean kimchi. This restaurant, at least, doesn’t make any of these adjustments a non-Korean chef might make (I am all for adjustments, but tex-mex kimchi just didn’t work for me, and it didn’t for my colleagues either).

As for the question of whether Norwegians would like the food or not, my completely biased opinion would be yes! But I have seen how sushi places in Norway are localized enough that I couldn’t find a single sushi place that has blue-backed fish (much stronger in “fishy” flavor than the fish they serve). As a personal guess, I believe Norwegians would enjoy bulgogi and kimchi jeon/pancakes a lot, but kimchi duruchigi might be too spicy. At least the restaurant is worth trying to see if you would like some Korean food as they would sell them in Korea. If you have concrete suggestions, you should definitely tell the chef. I would much rather have a slightly localized Korean place that I can go to in Oslo than an out-of-business authentic one.

For kimchi, you might also want to try what they sell at Himrir to see if you like that more or less. Himrir kimchi is much more “localized” than the one you will find here. I presume the adjustments Norwegian chefs make are for the general Norwegian palate (how brunost was localized for Korean style when they sell them at a cafe in Busan). You can also go to an Asian store; the brand they carry, 종가집, is considered good in Korea.

PS- I have one side comment in this review that’s already too long. There is one review commenting on instant ramen. That situation seems unfortunate. 라면/Ramyeon/ramyun holds a different place in Korea than in Japan historically and in present. For Koreans, ramyeon at a “street food” place (분식집) is an instant one with different toppings (quick and cheap!). In fact, they use 라멘/ramen in Korea to refer to the Japanese-style and those tend to be non-instant (slow and expensive). They don’t sell them now during the corona-takeout period, but they probably should rename it to ramyeon on their menu with...

We ended up ordering some different foods and they were all quite nice. The best thing about a place like this is that you can order many cuisines to try out and share. Something particular I remember is that the curry we got was actually quite spicy!

We went quite early in the day so it wasn't really busy yet, I think going later when a lot of other people are there would change the atmosphere completely. Though, we had a lot of space to browse the different stalls to see what the options are.

One of the biggest gripes I have is the application they use for ordering through QR-code. The interface of the app was terrible UX design, and it takes quite a bit of effort to go through the different stalls and see what they have to offer. I believe you're able to order directly from stalls so if that is doable I'd definitely recommend doing that.

Overall the place was quite alright (I believe the building also used to be a bath house which is very cool), very casual and...

You can notice there's not a lot going on in Oslo when a place like this opens and everyone is absolutely amazed by it. The reality is, however ☝️, that for the prices of the food, you could just pay 10kr extra and eat at a proper restaurant, minus the noise, minus trying to find a place to sit, minus having to yell to the person sitting next to you because there's so much noise.

Some of the venues here have another individual restaurant in the city, so if you're going there for the food, choose its restaurant version. If you're going there to be drunk and loud, well... then you probably will give this place 5 stars.

The tacos and the poke are great. I also like there's a lot of vegan options. I think it needs a space just for deserts. An, as always, just like in any other place where there's a lot of people, the bathroom are always a tiny bit messy (they're really to step up their game, but it's...