Tim Wendelboe, Oslo

Coffee is about being willing to rise above the rest.

Oslo’s Tim Wendelboe takes love for the bean to its natural extreme as it serves nothing but coffee. Opened in 2007, the eponymous café in Grünerløkka is, of course, named after the much-awarded barista champion. Wendelboe’s list of victories is easy to understand given his dedication to his craft. Not content with winning competitions, starting his own roastery and writing books on the subject, Wendelboe has even set up his own coffee farm in Colombia.

Little wonder that for the short time that we are here, we observe more people lining up to buy bags of coffee beans for home brewing than ordering drinks, something quite extraordinary. Most other cafés struggle to educate consumers on the merits of brewing coffee (using beans roasted in-house, naturally) themselves; Tim Wendelboe has a following of true believers, it seems.

While most customers order their Aeropress-brewed black coffee by default (with an entire range of single origin beans roasted in their Probat roaster, to the left of the bar), Tim Wendelboe’s milk coffee is remarkable too; my cortado benefited from a light espresso roast that is so typical of the Nordic style. No surprise, then, that their roastery has already won a hat-trick of the Nordic Roaster competition three years in a row.

挪威人愛喝咖啡是眾所周知的事，
那來到奧斯陸，又怎麼能錯過這裡的咖啡館？
除了老字號的Fuglen，
另一家咖啡客都愛來朝聖的應該就是Tim Wendelboe了。

Tim Wendelboe 曾于2004年意大利所舉辦世界咖啡師賽事中奪冠，
接著在2007年時以自己的名字開了這家咖啡館，
并開始了他的烘焙事業，
現在他們所烘焙的豆子除了供應其他咖啡館外，
更是北歐烘豆賽的常勝軍。
近來Wendelboe 更在哥倫比亞買下了一座咖啡農場，
企圖讓自己咖啡事業的版圖更加完整。

Tim Wendelboe 咖啡館位於Grünerløkka繁華商區里，
裡頭空間不算大，也沒有華麗的裝潢，
除了吧檯外，最吸引人的要數那架大烘豆機了。
雖然館內設置的位子很少，
但是慕名而來的咖啡客卻是絡繹不絕，
大夥兒都和我們一樣，點了咖啡站吧檯旁靜靜享用，
偶爾跟閒下來的咖啡師聊幾句，然後買些豆子就離開了。
和我還未到訪前所想象的，
一家坐滿咖啡客，熱鬧異常的咖啡館截然不同啊。