Jazz Age fun in Norway: Sommerro, Oslo

It was like something out of The Great Gatsby. My partner and I had just dropped our bags at Sommerro, Oslo’s newest and most stylish hotel, having arrived in the evening on a Saturday in June. 

We stood in the round central stairwell, gazing through the floor-to-ceiling window at Ekspedisjonshallen (pictured top) – the hotel’s main restaurant and bar – mesmerised by the party going on below. It was like a window onto the Jazz Age. 

Against the backdrop of the fabulous wall fresco by Norwegian artist Per Krohg of an early 1930s industrial landscape befitting Sommerro’s heritage, the band played in front of a sunken island bar, where the barmen shook their cocktail shakers like maracas to a room full of chatter. 

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The lights were turned down low and the waiters flitted among the rows of people eating and drinking at their tables and around the bar.

A hit with the locals

Sommerro is, after all, the place to come for a night out, judging by the number of well-heeled locals we encountered. Who could blame them? 

Sommerro opened in 2022, bringing added glamour to what was already the pretty smart neighbourhood of Frogner, on the west side of the city. Decades before that, the building first opened in 1931 as the headquarters of the Oslo Lysverker electric company. 

Utilities took pride in their appearance then and the building is dressed in smart red-brick work and uniform rectangular windows and decorated with bas-reliefs of workers carved into the ground-floor pillars by locally born artist Asbjørg Borgfelt. 

New York and London-based design studio GrecoDeco (which recently did up trendy London hotel The Ned) has done a wonderful job at keeping the interiors sympathetic to the building’s history. 

The chrome-coloured ceiling lights have been fashioned to look like little dangling Tesla coils, for example, and the stairwell we were standing in like a giant one. A night here even feels a little like sleeping in a vintage, sepia-coloured photograph from the 1930s. 

The wallpaper in our Deluxe room was a stained-yellowish colour; the light fittings were reminiscent of the period; the bed frame was made from polished birch wood, sporting a chequerboard inlay; and the cabinet housing the minibar displayed beautiful marquetry. 

The tiles in the shower in the floor-heated bathroom were a warm orangery hue. Through the bedroom windows, we looked out onto a little park and marvelled at how the sky grew no darker than a light indigo, even in the wee hours.

There are two main reasons why Sommerro is so popular with the locals – aside from being within easy reach of Oslo’s many museums, restaurants and galleries. (It’s worth buying the Oslo Pass, which gets you free and discounted entries. It can be used on public transport and it costs NOK760 (£54) for 48 hours.) One is the food. 

Nordic cuisine with an Asian twist

Ekspedisjonshallen has a bistro-style menu, serving fresh langoustines in the months when they are available and lobsters in the months when they’re not. The steak tartare is a must and it is also available in the roof-top, fine-dining restaurant TAK Oslo, led by the award-winning Swedish chef Frida Ronge. 

She has put together a Nordic-Asian fusion menu and it is well worth placing your ordering in her hands. The “Chef’s Choice Menu” opens with a single oyster, served in its shell in a sweet, yet delicate Asian sauce, nesting on a swirl of edible seaweed. 

Then came the seared scallops in a lovely mint- and pea-flavoured foam, followed by the tartare that had a consistency a little like rillette, served on toast; halibut in a creamy artichoke butter sauce; and, for dessert, a sweet, little “Tokyo-banana illusion”, coated in yellow chocolate and served with genmaicha (Japanese tea) ice cream. 

The Asian theme continues up here above the chimney tops at Izakaya, Sommerro’s light bites eatery and bar. I recommend opting for the maki (rice rolled around a filling). Oslo seems to have claimed these little rolls as its own and you will find them in many places around the city.

Bring your swimming cap...

The other reason is Vestkantbadet, the hotel’s basement wellness area. Here, the star attraction is the large mosaic that sits above the pool, depicting three lady swimmers in period costumes and caps, swimming with a handful of seals. 

It was created by Krohg for the opening of the baths to the public in 1932. The heads and torsos of the pair of ladies on the right side – “The Two Sisters” – today make up Sommerro’s emblem. 

While you’re changing, admire the cubicles – admittedly not a sentence you read everyday in a travel article, but they are the originals, hand-sanded ahead of the hotel’s opening. You could be forgiven for thinking you have wandered onto the set of Wes Anderson’s latest quirky adventure.

Chris was a guest of Sommerro. A member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts’ prestigious Legend Collection, rates start from £215 per room per night. The "Chef's Choice Menu" without beverage pairing at TAK Oslo costs NOK995 (£71).