St. Lars is a grill-restaurant in the borough

Bislett Bislett is a neighbourhood in the St. Hanshaugen borough in north-central Oslo, Norway. It is internationally famous for the Bislett Games, held at Bislett Stadium. Bislett has also become known to non-Norwegians due to being the home of the f ...

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. It is owned by international TV-chef

Andreas Viestad Andreas Viestad (born 5 April 1973, Oslo) is a Norwegian food columnist and TV chef. He has hosted seven seasons of '' New Scandinavian Cooking'' broadcast in the U.S., China, Germany, Italy, Finland and on BBC Food in over fifty countries since ...

,Dagbladet - Å starte restaurant gjøres med hjertet, ikke med hodet
/ref> Face2Face communications agency founder

Per Meland Per Meland (born Per Gunnar Meland, March 12, 1972) is a Norwegian businessman and media entrepreneur. Meland has co-founded several companies within media, publishing and technology. He has also directed documentaries, and owns an award-winning res ...

and Stargate-producer Tor Erik Hermansen. The restaurant is known for using meat from horsesNRK - Hestekjøtt er bedre enn sitt rykte, mener ekspertene
/ref> and bear, and even pigs from Bygdø Royal Farm's petting zoo. Everything apart from their horse tartar has been cooked on a custom made grill.Nettavisen - TV-kokk Viestad frastjålet supergrill
/ref> The cuisine is based on serving raw or grilled food with an emphasis on Norwegian produce and unusual cooking techniques. The owners have tried to bring some of the ambience from the New York-restaurant

The Spotted Pig The Spotted Pig was a gastropub located at 314 West 11th Street (at Greenwich Street) in the West Village in Manhattan in New York City. The 100-seat gastropub was owned by Ken Friedman. Mario Batali was a primary investor. The chef was April ...

, owned by Hermansen's StarRoc partner Jay-Z, to their restaurant. On several occasions St. Lars has collaborated with winemaker and musician

Sigurd Wongraven Sigurd Wongraven (born 28 November 1975), also known as Satyr, is a Norwegian musician who is the vocalist, guitarist, bassist and keyboardist for the black metal band Satyricon. Musical career Wongraven was a founding member of Satyricon ( ...

from

Satyricon The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petr ...

Vinofil - Matbegivenhet i Oslo neste uke
/ref> on special music and food weeks that has included dj-sets from artists like

Knut Schreiner Knut Schreiner (born 18 December 1974 in Bergen, Norway), is a Norwegian singer, musician and producer currently residing in Oslo. Also known by his stage name Euroboy, he has been part of important Norwegian bands like Kåre and The Cavemen know ...

from

Turbonegro Turbonegro (Turboneger in Norway) is a Norwegian Rock music, rock band, active from 1989 to 1998 and from 2002 to the present. The band combines glam rock, punk rock, and hard rock into a self-described "deathpunk" musical style. History Earl ...

. For Christmas 2012 St. Lars bought all the pigs from the petting zoo at

Bygdøy Royal Estate Bygdøy Royal Estate ( no, Bygdøy kongsgård), also known as the ''Bygdø Royal Farm'', is a Kongsgård estate and manor house that occupies a large part of the northwestern part of the Bygdøy peninsula in Oslo, Norway. It is the official summe ...

and had them as their main attraction on their annual Christmas menu.

Clientele and awards

The restaurant is frequented by notables such as

Queen Sonja of Norway Sonja (born Sonja Haraldsen on 4 July 1937) is Queen of Norway since 17 January 1991 as the wife of King Harald V. Sonja and the then Crown Prince Harald had dated for nine years prior to their marriage in 1968. They had kept their relatio ...

and the former Norwegian prime minister

Jens Stoltenberg Jens Stoltenberg (born 16 March 1959) is a Norwegian politician who has been serving as the 13th secretary general of NATO since 2014. A member of the Norwegian Labour Party, he previously served as the 34th prime minister of Norway from 2000 to ...

. In 2012 the restaurant was voted "restaurant of the year" by Natt & Dag. The restaurant has received favorable reviews from all major Norwegian newspapers.Dagen Næringsliv - Grillpatruljen
/ref>

Horse meat

During the "horse meat scandal" or the 2013 meat adulteration scandal that shocked European consumers on the beginning of 2013, St. Lars' horse beef tartar became their best-selling starter dish.VG - Ekspertene enige: - Hest er best!
/ref> Owner Andreas Viestad got a lot of media attention claiming that correctly prepared horse beef was the best meat to be had.

Grill stolen

In the morning hours of June 6, 2012 the restaurant's custom made grill was stolen by four men in a van. Viestad who called the grill "the Rolls Royce of grills", told the press he thought it was an ordered theft. The grill was never recovered.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Restaurants in Oslo