Fåbro Gård

Fåbro gård, despite its location in Lilleaker—far out on the city’s western side, has garnered massive attention on social media for offering “Oslo’s best buns”.

Dating back to 1750, the farm is the oldest building in Lilleaker. The current owners, Victoria Dam and her husband Robert, have great ambitions for this renovation project.

Having formerly worked as head of marketing at Wavemaker, a media and advertising service provider, Victoria Dam started a gardening and interior Instagram account in 2020 and has since accumulated more than 60,000 followers.

In this sense, the farm is her passions brought into reality. Her plans for the farm include a sourdough bakery, a café, an interior and plant shop as well as an event venue, according to her interview with Norwegian media. The garden would allow them to make both food and drinks from scratch, and they will try to make use of the space to hold autumn and Christmas markets, as well as different workshops, according to Dam.

The bakery and café opened its doors in spring 2024 and immediately became a local sensation. We came to the bakery on a Saturday noon and there was a long queue waiting outside. As it turned out, the bakery baked in batches. Thanks to bakery’s sudden vault into fame, every batch sold out immediately, so the new-comers need to wait.

After queuing for about 15 minutes, we bought a cardamom bun and a cinnamon bun (57 NOK each). They also had tea, coffee and juice for sale on a self-service trolley outside the greenhouse. Considering that the toilet was still under renovation for another couple of weeks—and the long distance back to the city centre, we decided to drop the drinks.

There was abundant seating in the garden. During inclement weather they also have a storehouse and another indoor space which can accomodate at least 50 people.

The buns were freshly baked, still warm, and incredibly moist and tasty. They had been made with a good amount of butter and were not as overpoweringly sweet as they tend to be. The pearl sugar applied on top transpired the Swedish baking style, still not too common in Oslo.

This should not come as a surprise. The owner Victoria Dam came from a Swedish baker family and the head bakers behind the bakery—Hanna Norrman and Oscar Eriksson—are both from Sweden. They both worked at Svedjan in Stockholm, whereas Norrman moved onto Fabrique in London and Eriksson stayed at Lillebrors Bageri in Stockholm. All three bakeries are well-known for their buns.

One extra detail for those especially interested in sourdough baking: Fåbro bakes almost everything in sourdough—except the buns. The buns do not taste better with sourdough, according to Norrman, and they were baked with regular yeast at Fåbro.

The second time we went to the farm was the last day before their summer vacation. We arrived at the bakery early in the morning immediately after they opened to avoid the crowds. This time, we tried one of their popular rhubarb buns and a cinnamon bun with nuts. Both were still good, but not as good as the first time. We suspected this is because we arrived so early that we got the first batch of the day and they were cold.

This perhaps offers a deeper understanding about life on a farm: the early bird does catch the worm—just probably not the best ones. Find an open weekend and pick a comfortable time to come over, you might need to wait, the buns might sell out, but you are most likely to be rewarded with one of the best buns Oslo can offer. The most important thing is that we do not need to take everything so seriously.