Rating: 9.25/10
Telephone 020-7722 8795.
Address Charlbert Street, London NW8.
Open Lunch, Mon-Sat, 12.15- 2.30pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 7-11pm.
Price Three-course set meal (no à la carte), £26.50 for lunch/£38.50 for dinner.
Wheelchair access.
The Norwegians are a generous people who have given us much merriment and jollity: the slapstick of Henrik Ibsen, the amusing paintings of Edvard Munch, that giant Christmas tree that arrives every year from the monarch. But their greatest gift is the little-known gem that is Oslo Court, named in homage to the home city of the airmen who drank in the wartime bar on the site, later redeveloped as a block of flats. The fact that the restaurant is in no sense Norwegian shouldn't detract from the debt of gratitude we owe that country.
This is the catering world's Narnia, the grim lobby offering not the vaguest clue of what's to be found when you walk through the cloakroom by the porter's desk and emerge into a land that time and trend forgot. By no means is it to all tastes, but if you have any appreciation of kitsch and high camp, let alone for gigantic portions of great food, the like of which has barely been seen since 1976, it's a must.
If you further happen to be a Jewish person aged between 81 and 106, this temple to the colours peach and pink, tangerine and mauve, presided over by the most clucking and indulgent waiting staff in history, is paradise. It is impossible to go an hour at Oslo Court without the dimming of lights, the presentation of candlelit cake ("A table for eight?" was the response when my friend rang to book. "You wanna cake?"), and a staff-led round of Happy Birthday.
On Saturday lunchtime (always booked up at least six months ahead) there might be a dozen choruses, but this night there were only three. Still, you can't have everything.
"Now this is what I call a menu," said one of us gleefully as we examined the scores of dishes on offer (myriad others were rattled off by a waiter as specials; if it walks or swims, it's here). Avocado prawns, veal Holstein, steak Diane, beef Wellington, grilled grapefruit, cream and brandy sauces... if it sounds like a culinary Jurassic Park, that's what it is, the Spanish family who own and run it realising the idiocy of tampering with a formula that so delights their ultra-loyal clientele.
Almost everything was so good, you wonder why no one else delves into the amber for the DNA and revives these splendid dinosaurs. The grapefruit, served hot with brown sugar and brandy, was weirdly delicious, while lobster cocktail contained far more white meat than you'd expect in a main course. Deepfried scampi and whitebait came with a delectable tartare sauce, and a piece of toast was dropped by tongs from about the height from which Greg Louganis used to dive into the pool, yet made no splash whatever in a bowl of gutsy onion soup.
By the time the plates had been cleared, we were examining the holiday snaps of the woman at the next table (Denver, Colorado; and very nice it looked, too), and this oddly seductive communal atmosphere continued when we joined in the second Happy Birthday, despite the celebrant being 25 feet away.
Apart from a mediocre poached salmon, the main courses franked the form. Many of us had the duck, served three different ways (with cherry, orange or apple sauce: there is something of Gourmet Night at Fawlty Towers, without the calamities, about Oslo Court), and all supremely crispy and sumptuous. Both recipients raved about the veal Holstein, in which a wiener schnitzel comes with a fried egg and anchovies, and a visceral cry went up on the unscheduled arrival of a plate of latkes, those deep-fried potato patties of which my mother observes, with no discernible trace of irony, "They killed more Jews than the Germans".
In this ocean of pleasure it's hard to pick the highlight, but if we must the honour goes to the Egyptian chap in the florid waistcoat who looks after the puddings (he used to push a trolley, but his back's gone). A hybrid of San Francisco superqueen, standup comic and genius schmoozer of the elderly - one of us said he was once so extraordinarily sweet to her mother that it made her cry - he coaxes and cajoles already bloated stomachs into finding the strength for crêpe suzette, apple strudel and wonderful bread-and-butter pudding. He goes a long way to explaining why Oslo Court recently won an award for Best Front of House and is more than worth the money on his own.
