Encore

Croissant, pain au chocolat, pain suisse—it’s hard to imagine a city’s café scenes without the French pastries. It’s even harder to imagine a European city without any French pâtisseries. Encore, located on the edge bewteen St. Hanshaugen and Majorstuen, is exactly such a place in Oslo where you can find all kinds of exquisite French gâteaux and pastries.

The Frenchman behind Encore is Théo Romer, who came to Oslo in 2015 for a job at Sebastien Bruno, a high-end chocolate chain named after one of the two owners. At that time, Romer was only 19 years old, at his last year of the pastry chef education in France, where he specialised in chocolate. Looking back today, chocolate has been the magical ingredient that played a central role throughout his career.

Having worked for five years at Sebastien Bruno, Romer met his business partner and decided to open their own shop in 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic changed everything: the whole country was under lockdown, and their investor decided to pull out without a warning. Waiting for the next big opportunity to come, Romer and his business partner started selling chocolate Easter rabbits from their apartment window. Thanks to the strong demand triggered by the pandemic, their products went viral and eventually attracted new investors. One year later, their dream of opening their own French pâtisserie became reality.

Bold, creative, with attention to details and exquisite craftsmanship, the shop by the two young Frenchmen became increasingly popular as the city gradually crawled back from the shadows of the pandemic, and established itself as one of the trendiest, luxurious French pastry shops in town. Two years later in 2023, however, they decided to split up.

Romer’s business partner sold his share, took the old brand with him and opened a new shop, while Romer stayed and rebranded the shop to Encore, which means “more, one more, in French”, Romer said in an interview in 2023 with Avisa Oslo, a local newspaper. “There is room for more French places in Oslo. We make up a new generation,” Romer told Avisa Oslo.

Romer never openly commented on the exact reason of the breakup, while his business partner attributed it to different business visions in his interviews with trade media. Whatever the reason is, Encore lived up to its name as a continuation: the interior retained its original style, with light mint green walls, granite surfaced coffee tables and dark blue velvet chairs; yet Romer continued developing the menu and created some of his own signature pastries.

One of the must-try pastries at Encore are the Oslo-rolls—a round croissant that contains a rich filling. There are currently four different types available and the exact filling depends the variety: the dark chocolate ones are filled with a silky chocolate filling, while the pistachio type has an abundant filling of pistachio ganache, and the same logic applies to the hazzle nuts and caramel ones. The different varieties of the Oslo-rolls testify to Romer’s another culinary obsession, namely nuts and in particular their different textures and flavours when combined with chocolate.

The crookies and brookies are other examples of the tradtional desserts with an interesting twist. The crookies are cookies based on croissant dough while brookies a combination of brownie and cookies, filled with caramel.

In addition to all the exquisite French cakes, pastries as well as the sandwiches in the glass counter, one can also find coffee here brewed with beans from the Oslo-based roastery Lippe, and teas sourced from the French premium tea supplier Palais des Thés. Mind you, Encore is also one of the earliest cafés in Oslo that served matcha latte.

Of course, when one comes to a high-end French pâtisserie, flaky pastries are always the centre of attention. The flakiness is “a sign of quality”, something that “maybe the Frenchmen in particular understand well”, Romer said in his Avisa Oslo interview. Croissants and pain au chocolat from Encore were always meticulously laminated: crispy, airy, with a somewhat sharper flavour and crispier texture. “That’s because I have a secret ingredient,” Romer told us. “I can tell you, but you need to promise you won’t tell others,” he added with a gleeful wink. Such moments remind one that, despite having lived in Oslo for 10 years and speaking fluent Norwegian, he remains awfully French.