With 16 people in our apartment, we felt a bit crowded - but in a good way. When you just sit down and get served food in your own kitchen it’s kind of weird, but in the skilled hands of Arne Austbø from Taku Catering, we were so taken care of. It was a wonderful evening and a sushi experience out of the ordinary!

Mr. Austbø is kind of a novelty in the Oslo restaurant scene. You know this when he comes with his own photographer from the most prestigious financial newspaper in Norway following him around. We’re trendsetters… Really!! Taku Catering is just this one guy who comes to your house and cooks fantastic sushi for you. Here is how an evening like that can look like.

Our extensive menu consisted of the following delicious items (trying my best to translate from Norwegian):

Sweet shrimps with mango, green onion and masago in lime juice
This was the one of the two first dishes, and set the standard high. The sweet shrimp was incredibly tasty. The oily feel was maybe a bit overwhelming, but it made for an interesting start in it’s combination of sweet and salty.

Hallibut and tuna terrine in yuzysoy with spring onion and avocado
This was described as an explosion of tastes. I really liked this one. Arne could also calm my “activist” heart with that it was not bluefin tuna we were having. He had read my blog…

Sashimi platter
The sashimi platter with tuna, salmon, tuna and salmon tataki, scallops, sweet shrimps, tiger prawns, hallibut, masago, akkar, hokkegai (surf clam) was wonderful. A lot of fresh and yummy fish. I was especially happy with the red surf clam which very often tends to be a bit too chewy for my taste. We will force the chef to be even more spectacular in choice of weird fish next time. Ah, but the salmon tataki was exceptionally good!

White chocolate with trout roe
White chocolate with trout roe. Now this was a combination I would never expect. Sweet chocolate and the cruncy, salty trout roe… It sounded like the crowd was diveded on the verdict of this one, but I have to say that this is maybe the one dish that stands out the most for its peculiarity. I liked it! And I thought it was very inventive.

Halibut with edamame and pomegranate
Halibut with edamame and pomegranate in a calvados and white balsamico vinegar dressing. Another inventive dish. The smooth white fish with the acidic sauce made for a fun dish. It also did stand out “design wise” and I thought of this as one of the more beautifully prepared ones.

Tuna Chevice with asparagus
Tuna ceviche with asparagus, sesame seeds and nori was good, but otherwise quite ordinary. A good, simple taste on our way to our next dish.

Uramakis
Uramaki - one with shrimps, asparagus covered with sesame seeds and REAL GOLD! The other one had rice crisp, tuna, cucumber, parmesan and pine nuts with a sweet soy sauce to it. I love maki, and it was nice to have some rice in the equation too. The golden uramaki was a beauty, and worked great as a crowd pleaser. It is special to eat real gold!

Vegetarian futomaki
A vegetarian futomaki with asparagus, cucumber, pickled red onion, shitake, avocado and spring onion. I felt this one had not that much of a personality. We were getting spoiled with inventive dishes by now. It was an ok maki roll, but not a favorite.

Nigiri sushi
Three different kinds of nigiri sushi with salmon, tuna and tiger shrimps. Beautiful, nicely portioned and yummy. Wish we had gotten something else than what we usually get in Oslo-restaurants for nigiri sushi though. Next time…

Gunkan maki
Three types of gunkan maki - one with shrimps marinated in yuzu and olive oil with finely chopped red onion, one with king crab in it, one with jellyfish (!) with cucumber and sesame oil. Now this was fun, and all of them were very good. Never had jellyfish before, and according to Ken, who has, this was the best one he had ever had. It was crunchy, but not that uncomfortable feeling I was worried that jellyfish might have. A fun experience!

Salmon skin with salmon roe
Crispy fried salmon skin salad with salmon roe was very good and introducing salad and fried food after that much raw stuff was a good break in the meal. Yummy!

Salmon tartar with avocado and spring onion
Salmon tartar with avocado and spring onion in yuzusoy… I could not find any pictures of this dish, so I have a hard time remembering it. A price to pay when you finish up the review a month after the event. Or maybe the amount of sake had kicked in and ruined my ability to remember…

Filet mignon carpaccio of horse
The filet mignon carpaccio of horse with miso pickled garlic was kind of special. I did like it, and I know we eat a lot of horse meat in sausages for instance and I did not grow up with horses, but having raw horse meat still has a kind of emotional aspect to it. I don’t know. Don’t think I will order this very often.

Squid with pumpkin and physalis
Squid… Usually not a favorite because it too is very often too chewy for me. This lemon olive oil garlic marinated squid with deep fried shredded pumpkin with physalis was a pleasure for the eye and also quite good. The squid was more crunchy than chewy.

Tofu with pumpkin, enoki and garlic
The tofu with miso barbequed pumpkin, kimchee fried enoki and deep fried garlid with spring onion and ginger was the best I have ever had, and almost maybe my favorite dish through the whole meal. I really love tofu - but the sensitivity this version was put together with was special. Absolutely fantastic! I will be forcing Arne to teach me how to make this!

Scallop with mushroom
In the more heavy part of the meal now with more tastes. I love scallops, and this butter soy fried version with pepper mushroom is a recipe I will try to make myself. Would make for a great starter!

Duck liver with physalis and pomegranate
I have a hard time remembering what the duck liver tasted. We were getting really full and probably a bit tipsy too, so I am not sure if I even had much. It looked beautiful though.

Ginger and vanilla Creme Brûlée
Ahhh. For dessert we creme brûlée which I think is my favorite dessert in the whole world. Is this chef intuitive?? I don’t think I have had ginger in my creme brûlée before, but that gave an interesting spicyness to it. Yum! A fantastic ending to a spectacular meal.

All in all I think that we will remember this evening as a very special one. At least I will. Next time I will have him surprise us a bit more. Arne did not know us from before, so for a first meeting this was fantastic. But next time! Then I will challenge him to stretch us even more. Also in some of the dishes I felt like it was lacking the subtleties that I so enjoy in Japanese food in general and sushi in specific - that the combination of flavors were not always “right”. A bit much sometimes, too little of other things. And seasonal. I do wish it was a bit more seasonal.

But really. To summarize. This was a fantastic meal! And we will do this again. Arne and his helper really made this into a very special night. And it is not that expensive either. If you were to order this at any of the restaurants in town, you would have to pay much more than the 600 NOK we paid each. I hope he won’t get too expensive when all the west siders, reading Dagens Næringsliv want a sushi piece of him.

Thank you all so much for making this into a fantastic night. And sorry guys, for being so incredibly slow posting this. Some of us have a day job or two (!) to take care of too.

And yeah - you can reach Taku Catering and chef Arne via his website!

Here are some more photos:
The nice ones are taken either by Håvard Gjelseth or Erik Johan Worsøe Eriksen. The bad and blurry ones were taken by me…

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