The Tea Room in Oslo – Chef Luke Henderson Debuts at a Two Michelin Star Level

Tonight we're having dinner at one of the hottest new restaurants in Oslo. We are at the Tea Room. This is a fine dining restaurant from chef Luke Henderson. He used to work at MIMO and now he's opening his own spot. He's bringing in his British heritage, combining it with his fine dining training. The restaurant is super intimate. It only has five tables so it's really personal. There's only a few chefs and a few people working in the front of house. They also have a wine bar attached to the restaurant called the Imperial where they're serving more casual British comfort food like hash browns, beef tartare on waffles and scotch eggs. My name is Luke Henderson and I'm the chef here at the Tea Room. I'm from Shropshire which even in England no one really knows where that is. I worked for Tom Kerridge for the Hannaflowers and then my next larger one was at MIMO with Jordan and Espen. I definitely feel like when I look at it after it's definitely a marriage between them two. So at the very start we have a broth of tomatoes from south of Norway and then we've just seasoned it with elderflower vinegar and also the oil. And so we've just taken all of the skin which we've dried and now we've treated it as a chicharron. Just on top of that we have the roe as well. Just preserve this by smoking and then finally now you have pickled leek as well. I really wanted it to be an offer. The produce is amazing and I really love the Norwegian kind of taste and flavours but then I also really love like the technique that I learned from the UK as well because I do think that they're quite different. I want another one. Yeah we have five tables and we're a very small team. I've just had three cooks and then two in the front as well because it's really quite personal I think. At the moment we're serving 17 like either dishes or bites. So this is made from a nori pancake and then just into that we have a cream of yeast and then also an egg yolk cream. Just on top to fill the tart we've got mountain trout. So this we've actually been aging now for one week as we just brine it first and then hang it and so then we've served it with some of the roe and you have pickled nori on top as well. Just again we want to take this in one bite. Thank you. We have the crustage which has been made with deer and also whey from the cheese near and then we just fill this with langoustine claw which we've lightly steamed and we've bound this with an emulsion made from the roasted heads and then on top of that we have pickled fennel with cabbage flowers as well. So we worked together at MIMO and when this project came up it was straight away is like I have to talk to Jeff about it because for me I always like the way he is with guests and love like his passion for his style of wine and then we also have this guy Tony so he's making all of the juices as well. Tony and Jeff together they work at UNDER so when we approached Jeff, Jeff straight away approached Tony as well. And a little forgotten about part of Loire Valley, Courchevelny where you'll find the grape romaranta and also some menu pinot. Quite a rich and ripe style of pet net to assist with this lovely creamy texture and still with this aromatic nose there as well. Juice is actually almond milk homemade along with some dried raspberry. Coming to the end of the last white asparagus from Norway we just braise this in the whey from the cheese near and then on top of that you'll find a little bit of caviar from gastronica and then finally as a sauce a cream made from the preserved white asparagus within the whey as well. Finally you have the ground ivy on top so you just want to go right into the bottom get all the layers together. Actually we didn't know the Norwegians would love it so much and we have like celeriac juice and mussels and then it's just seasoned with a little bit of curry powder as well so we just have this one at the moment with scallops and a curry leaf oil but then all the Norwegians after tell me that this reminds them of like when they were younger eating the fiskabolla with the curry sauce. I didn't even know it just happened. So now we have for you our bread serving. So then also the beer that goes into the bread so this is uh one of my favorites so it's a whole speckled hen which is an English red ale so we just reduced that right down and made very much like a mork syrup what you would have or treacle what we would call in English. We've added that into a rye brioche just on the side So yeah at the minute actually we have the langoustines from Froya and so we're just cooking this in salted butter and then we have this with a roasted cabbage and lamb broth with just a bit of beef fat at the end and then we picked some jack by the hedge from around town and just blanched, made a puree of that. It's seasoned with pickled horseradish as well. It reminds me of a cheeseburger. I think it's the garum so it's super like beefy salty like umami really good like barbecued. This one here is the duck. So you just age the duck on the crown for one week. At the very bottom you have cream of onion along with black garlic and here's a sauce made from nettles and duck bones and then we just added in some butter as well. Just on top you have the leaf. This is made from caramelized onions and bramson. Now we have the liver parfait and then also it works the liver and then this is just alongside some pickled lingam of the potato nuts with chickweed on the top. You just want to take this in one bite. So now we have a little pre-dessert so this one here is the licorice milk sorbet. You have a puddle there of lattice blueberries. So just preserve these with salt to collect all of the juice and now we've added the tarragon oil and just this morning myself and Tom we went out and picked some ants from big toys. I love tea like days off like 10 cups of tea I love it and it's like makes me so happy just have a cup of tea you know and it's also quite funny because in the UK you have loads of bad places called like someone's tea room or whatever it's like a nice way to try and make that good again. So we do this more Asian style of brewing so it's quite a high dosage of loose leaf. Here we're using guransa. This is a Nepalese basically wild black tea grown at high altitude and this is also the first flush. So as you can see hardly any time that you allow it to steep really almost to have this soft expression with a lot more of the stone fruit touch of this hay kind of character there as well. So just to go with your tea now we have a little slice of custard tart. So we have the custard in the middle it's been infused with sweet woodruff and then just on top there you have last year's just preserve this with champagne and also earl grey tea and lemon. Now we have to your final bites so we have a few pedicures to go the coffee so I'll start off with this one here this is a sour gum this one has been made from pickled beetroot and also rose and then we also have an ice cream sandwich of rhubarb custard so we have a rhubarb custard parfait with ginger parking on the outside and then we have the elderflower from this week so you have a little fritter made from elderflower cordial at the bottom and we also have a custard and pickled elderflower it's been seasoned with Chinese five spice and then finally is a cannoli from pine and rum so you have the young little spruce just on top pickled as well