SentralenMat

Sentralen is a former bank building, transformed by its owners, Savings Bank Foundation DNB, into a center for culture and innovation. The impressively refurbished venue boasts meeting facilities and concert halls, and most importantly, a café and a restaurant. Run by the restaurant group Lava, Sentralen Restaurant's menu is a vegetable-heavy list of sharable dishes. Upon our visit, the place is teeming with guests, we spy both conference ID-tags and nervous young couples meeting their in-laws for the first time.

The wine list is dominated by a handsome selection of natural wines, our friendly waitress' suggestion of a Loire Valley Chenin from Domaine Mosse turns out to be a spot-on choice for our various dishes. The beetroot tartare is by now a classic, visually nearly indistinguishable from the meat version, it has nutty flavors of sunflower seeds and an anis-like finish of tarragon. Roasted bone marrow with pickled green tomatoes is satisfyingly rich, the white and green asparagus with duck egg and bonito flakes, on the other hand, is quite bland. Lacking in contrast and vibrancy, it tastes more of bonito flakes than of the sprouting spring season. The king crab looks grand with its smattering of ramps, lime and seaweed, we look forward to getting our fingers dirty, but the crustaceans are undercooked and difficult to dig out of their shells. The lime- and ramps add freshness, but even though the crispy seaweed strands have an interestingly iodine-briny crunch, the totality is too salty. Sentralen lives up to its label as a center of innovation, but could use some fine-tuning in its execution.

Published January 2020