How fine dining got punked: Come inside Punk Royale’s new Oslo outpost

In a dark basement in Oslo’s affluent Frogner neighbourhood, Vivaldi’s gentle violins pour from the speakers and a smoke machine hazes up the room as chefs and servers huddle in the small kitchen. “I’m proud of what we are doing tonight,” says Joakim Almqvist. “I’m quite nervous, actually. But that’s good.”

It’s the final moments before the very first service at Punk Royale Oslo, and sleep-deprived chef-owner Almqvist is giving his team one last pep-talk before 20 guests step in side for a pre-opening dinner at his new outpost. The pre-service tension is palpable. It’s the same kind of tension found in locker rooms before the big game – the same kind of tension found in restaurant kitchens everywhere a round the world. But Punk Royale is not the same.

Related: With a single ingredient, artist Carsten Höller’s restaurant makes brutally delicious food

Since 2015, when Almqvist welcomed his first guests at the inaugural Punk Royale in Stockholm, locking away their phones as they took their seats in the tiny Södermalm space, the restaurant has been an uninhibited experience shrouded in secrecy. Intriguing morsels of information were fed to those hungry to find out more: tales of Almqvist serving and often hand-feeding people what he calls ‘chef food’ – caviar, foie gras, truffles – in a dark, night club -like environment with Iron Maiden and Ibiza bangers blaring from the speakers. Along one wall, the infamous ‘Wheel of Misfortune’, a spin of which results in diners getting free shots, getting spanked, or getting naked.

In 2018, the group opened an outpost in Copenhagen. Now, Almqvist and his team are completing the Scandinavian hattrick, expanding the Punk Royale brand to Oslo. It all star ted as a rebellion against the meticulous white tablecloth settings, the ritualistic stiffness, and the straight laced boredom of fine dining. “We were taking away things that I think are unnecessary in a fine dining experience,” Almqvist says over coffee the morning after Oslo’s first service. “All that shit.”

After the set menu was served the previous evening, things concluded with broken glasses, red wine showers, and diners dancing on the tables. It sounds like a nightmare for most other restaurants but at Punk Royale, these are the hallmarks of a roaringly successful shift.

“Seeing all this,” he says, gesturing to the walls covered in Super Mario-themed graffiti, “it might sound a bit weird.” Perhaps surprisingly, this dining bacchanal was inspired by Denmark’s Noma, a fine-dining Mecca and a destination regularly touted as one of the best restaurants in the world. “My first Noma experience, that changed everything,” says Almqvist. He didn’t quite “understand the food”, wasn’t even sure if he “liked it or hated it”. Still, it had a profound impact. “What struck me was I’ve never felt this good in a restaurant. I’m in one of the finer establishments in the world, and I feel like I’m home,” he says. “Afterwards I was like, ‘It’s not about rules anymore. It’s about the energy we’re putting in’.”

Before opening Punk Royale in Stockholm, Almqvist and his partners were cooking in a resort in Sweden’s swanky ski town Åre; a chaotic party restaurant with owners and front of house staff drinking alongside guests every night. Chaos. Stress. No control. So, the chefs had to serve guests themselves. “We are from the countryside, and we didn’t know anything about serving in a fancy style. So we said to ourselves, ‘We need to be relaxed, be ourselves, and just enjoy ourselves and be happy’,” says Almqvist. Their relaxed behaviour loosened up the guests, adding to the lively atmosphere.

Related: Meet the royal-approved self-taught baker making Gothenburg crazy for cake

Eventually, Almqvist and crew decided to break out on their own, opening Punk Royale in a tiny shoebox of a location. In the beginning, it was all quite innocent. But soon, the party grew wilder. “Punk Royale is really a people’s restaurant. It’s the behaviour and the energy of the guests that is constantly changing the restaurant,” Almqvist says. “The smoke machine came about because people were standing up dancing, and the sound system got bigger along with the party.” And then came the Wheel of Misfortune, which really kicked things up a notch.

“It was like a football game. People were clapping their hands and shouting,” he says. “It was an extremely useful tool to get a whole restaurant together.” He wasn’t thinking about long-term success or opening multiple locations. Instead, his approach was simply, “we were cooking for the day and we were drinking for the day”.

In time, Punk Royale became its own institution, but not without taking its toll – today, Almqvist is sober. However, he refuses to put an end to the party he started. But can you still be ‘punk’ when you have a trio of restaurants at the heart of Europe’s most expensive cities and a brand that is highly scalable? “Yes, I think so. We don’t want to become an empire in any way. We needed to open a new restaurant to not get bored,” he says. “In Stockholm, we’ve been taking it so far. Here, we can start anew from day one. Even if the DNA is the same, the restaurants are all different.”

In the most exclusive part of Copenhagen, next door to a formal, two-starred Michelin restaurant and the Queen’s castle, lies the Copenhagen outpost. Here, neighbours of the restaurant can witness Punk Royale patrons lining up outside to get a spanking by their fellow diners. During a recent visit, I ate caviar off my hand, was scolded by a balaclava-clad chef for not immediately downing the vodka shot he’d poured me from a gas canister and was spoon-fed a delicious bite of lobster with truffle shavings. I was even caressed by a host with long, painted fingernails. Everything in a haze of theatre-smoke and deafening Iron Maiden.

Almqvist is no stranger to controversy. He faced backlash in 2014 when he and former co-owner Kalle Nilsson served chocolate balls during a pop-up at the now-closed restaurant Kåken in Stockholm (in Sweden, a similar ball has an outrageously racist name). “It was a huge scandal in the media. And we took the fall for it,” says Almqvist, matter-of-factly. “There was this political correctness climate, and everyone in Sweden was very insecure.”

Since then, far more groundbreaking political debates have affected the restaurant business – the #MeToo movement and attacks on the long working hours and sub-par conditions in some of the world’s most celebrated kitchens. Even the stuffiest fine dining establishments have been forced to reassess their work culture.

It could be tricky for a restaurant like Punk Royale to retain its wild and raunchy image at a time when the discussion about boundaries and the wellbeing of staff in the restaurant industry is a hotter topic than ever. And what happens when you cross the guests’ boundaries? “I think it’s great what’s happening in the restaurant industry right now. The rules we are trying to break are the norms of how to have dinner,” he says. “But in the beginning, we did cross many boundaries. We were so much more aggressive.”

Related: “A spoonful of Lurpak is just as enjoyable as a good piece of chocolate”: Meet Denmark’s professional butter tasters

Today, the restaurant operates with a veto rule, says Almqvist. If any member of the staff feels in any way that something is awkward, weird, or crossing the line, everyone backs up. No discussions. The second rule is that if guests are disturbed with staff or other guests’ behaviour, action is immediately taken to stop it. “This is a very, very thin line. We know we’re never going to reach perfection here,” he says. “You move the boundaries around and see what is OK or not. In the end, it's all about joy. It's all about energy – giving and getting something extra.”

Like being spoon-fed, for example. While it might cross some people’s red lines, there’s really a lot of thought behind it, says Almqvist. “The Wheel of Misfortune is a tool. The smoke machine is a tool. Locking in people's phones is a tool. Feeding someone is one of the most intimate things you can do. You get fed when you can’t eat yourself. When you’re a baby, if you become very sick, and at the end of life when you are not strong enough,” he says. “Guests must trust us. And the food needs to be absolutely delicious. After that, we can take more risks.”

Alongside Almqvist at Punk Royale Oslo is 38-year-old Australian Katherine Bont – the group’s ‘Head of Guest Experience’. Formerly, she was one of the key figures in Noma’s front of house team. The two met in Copenhagen in 2018 when Punk Royale was opening in Denmark. They ended up in a head over heels relationship which ultimately led to Bont leaving Noma to live and work in Stockholm.

Although their relationship didn’t last, the two remain professional partners. Today, Bont uses her vast service experience to take care of the team. Running a very special restaurant requires very special staff. “It doesn't matter where people have worked and their experience,” she says. “The thing we focus on is the personality. Their character and the energy they bring.”

In Oslo, the first service was a symphony of contrast. It didn’t take long before Vivaldi’s violins segued into a smokey haze of Calvin Harris and warm oysters with green curry butter served in a dog bowl. Then there were shrimp lollipops and seared scallops with foie gras sauce to the tune of Sak Noel’s Latin banger ‘Loca People’. “This is all so non-Norwegian. Especially in this posh area,” one of the guests screams over the music. “Oslo needs a place like this.”