Visit one of the world's best coffee bars

At Tim Wendelboe, the coffee arrives lighter than many people expect.

Bright. Fresh. Almost tea-like.

Not dark chocolate and roasted bitterness, but pronounced fruity sweetness, bright acidity and floral notes, the kind of Nordic light roast coffee that helped put Oslo on the global coffee map.

Inside the small Oslo café, coffee loving tourists line up beside locals and regulars. Espresso machines hiss constantly while baristas move quickly behind the counter. On the wall behind the counter, trophies hint at the café's international recognition.

It is busy without ever feeling chaotic.

In a separate room behind the café, Wendelboe stands over rows of coffee cups, silently tasting with a spoon. This is his Monday morning ritual.

He slurps loudly, deliberately, pulling air through the coffee to better taste it.

"Why come here otherwise?"

According to Wendelboe, coffee has changed dramatically over the last twenty years.

"The raw materials are much better now," he says. "There’s much more variation."

Where coffee was once blended anonymously, specialty coffee introduced a stronger focus on farms, regions and processing methods.

"Before, single-plantation coffee wasn’t really common," he says. "Now people care where their coffee comes from."

That shift also changed customers themselves.

"A lot of people say they don’t like acidic coffee," he says. "But when they taste it, they often find that they in fact do."

Part of his philosophy is to challenge people slightly.

"Why come here if you just want the same thing you always drink?"

That mindset shapes the café’s entire approach.

New employees spend up to six months training, not only learning brewing techniques, but also customer service.

The Oslo effect

Norway's soft, pure water makes it easier to brew good coffee, something Wendelboe sees as a major advantage.

Combined with a generation of ambitious Norwegian baristas and roasters, Oslo gradually became one of the world's most influential coffee cities.

Places like the also very famous Fuglen coffee shop and roaster, centrally located at Youngstorget, helped export Nordic coffee culture internationally, especially to Japan, where they now have several Fuglen coffee shops.

For Wendelboe, the work is never really finished.

"Coffee is constantly changing," he says. "So we make small adjustments all the time."

Even after roasting, patience matters.

"When coffee is very fresh, everything just tastes roasted," he says. "At home, I usually let it rest for around two weeks before brewing."

Despite the international recognition, he has no interest in opening more cafés.

For Wendelboe, this small space, once home to blowdryers and scissors as Grete's Salon, tiled by her husband and decorated in a distinctly 1960s style, remains the café he wants to keep improving.