HIMKOK

HOW A “MADE IN NORWAY” ETHIC MADE HIMKOK A GOLD MEDALIST IN SUSTAINABILITY

Behind a teal stone facade in downtown Oslo, marked only by the street number, visitors are greeted by shelves of preserved fruits and vegetables — a visual appetiser for the bar’s celebration of hyper-local flavours and ingredients. Himkok means moonshine in Norwegian, but translates literally as “cooked at home”. Fittingly, the bar brews, distills and produces as much as possible in-house.

WORDS COLIN PEEBLES CHRISTENSEN

Since opening in 2015, the bar has shot up global bar rankings, leaping to 17th place on the World’s 50 Best Bars list this October. Last year, Himkok also won the exclusive Ketel One Sustainable Bar Award — a nod of approval of the team’s tireless efforts to put locavore ethics and waste reduction on the agenda. It also helped push Himkok onto headlines and chyrons as the world’s most sustainable bar.

“Unless we fix the way we eat and drink we can’t fix the world’s climate issues or starvation. And the biggest impact to our own environment starts with our own sources,” says Himkok’s founder and general manager Erk Potur. “And [this kind of] sustainable business gives local consumers more understanding of their own habitat and craftsmanship and reason to be proud of their own heritage.” The venue comprises a cocktail bar and distillery, a backyard cider bar, and a large upstairs area seating 300-350 people, where tap cocktails help lubricate service. They are all connected by a common theme that rests on two key pillars: local focus and waste reduction and repurposing.

Himkok currently produces 75 to 80 per cent of its own spirits. That’s thanks to a 180 litre hybrid-still distillery on the first floor that churns out potato-based vodka, gin and aquavit, Norway’s signature spirit. These lay the foundations for most of Himkok’s seasonal cocktails. Specialised expressions such as the Himkok Old Tom sherry cask gin and Himkok seaweed aquavit, are reserved for the spirits list.

“Wine is huge in Norway, but it’s mostly French wines, Italian wines, South African wines,” Potur says. “But at Himkok we reduced imported wine sales 50 per cent.” Fruit wines, made in-house from rhubarb and strawberry, and the ice plum wine from Skott Gård, are local replacements for imported bordeauxs, burgundies and rieslings. Himkok’s beers, too, are made just a few blocks away at the affiliated microbreweries Crow Bar and Eik & Tid. Himkok also makes its own mead, with honey from a local Oslo bee-keeping collective.

An outdoor cider bar — Norway’s first, according to Potur — was originally stocked with international ciders. But as domestic production grew, especially in the applegrowing Hardanger region, Himkok cut back on its foreign offerings. “We had nearly 90 per cent foreign ciders. Now it’s the total opposite. Ninety per cent of our ciders are from Norway, 10 per cent are coming from abroad,” he says. “It was a process.”

The new cocktail menu, titled “Around Norway”, was launched in September and showcases local, seasonal ingredients. “Farmers are the most important part of the ‘farm-to-table, field-to-drink’ movement,” Potur says. “So very early we made a lot of research about local producers, farmers and their best available products [that] you can use for the season.” Himkok currently cooperates with around 60 producers across the country.

Domestic ingredients include sea buckthorn from Trondheim, milk kefir from Rørås, pine needles from Telemark and tomatoes from Finnøy — home of Norway’s annual tomato festival. The tomato juice is clarified and combined with vermouth, Himkok aquavit and the bar’s bread-infused vodka for the “Tomato” cocktail. Oats from Moss, a city about 50 kilometres south of Oslo, is combined with aquavit, aquafaba, raspberries and allspice in “Oats and Raspberry”.

Aquafaba — a non-dairy foaming agent made from chickpea water — comes from leftovers at neighbouring Turkish and Indian restaurants. It is used as stand-in for egg whites, slashing the usual egg yolk wastage while also making use of restaurant refuse.

Himkok substitutes imported citrus with seasonal Norwegian souring agents. Rhubarb and red currants from southern and northern Norway, as well as organic whey from cheese production at Bygdø Kongsgård, located within city limits, are effective low-milage alternatives to lemons and limes.

Each month, Himkok makes 100 litres of milk punch using 3.5 kilos of organic dairy waste. The bar turns discarded citrus peel into aromatic perfumes and leftover fermented fruit pulp from wine production is distilled for Himkok’s Nordic eau de vie. ‘Tails’ from distillation, high in non-drinkable fusel alcohols, are collected and used for cleaning bar counters and toilets. Nothing from the distillery is thrown away, Potur explains.

Green operations can be profitable too: The bar sold 200,000 cocktails and 10,000 litres

of house-made spirits last year. “Financially, also, we are very sustainable,” he says.

Himkok belongs to a small family of lowwaste locavore pioneers. Other members include the nomadic Trash Tiki, Native bar in Singapore (this year’s sustainability award winner) and Luke Whearty’s Operation Dagger in Singapore and Outrage of Modesty in Cape Town. Potur specifically highlights Byrdi, Whearty’s freshest Melbourne venue, as a bar to watch.

Norway’s world-leading bottle deposit scheme and hydro-powered electricity help reduce Himkok’s carbon footprint, but short growing seasons present a challenge for seasonal sourcing. In contrast to sun-soaked Australia, Norway’s growing season last about two months. This has forced the team to think creatively about preservation, using methods like pickling and fermenting. Still, Potur believes that if it can be done in partly Arctic Norway, it should be a piece of cake elsewhere.

“We are not zero waste”, Potur concedes. “Whoever say that they are zero waste, I don’t know, it’s hard to believe because at the end of the day our industry is a luxury business. We bring in a lot of bottles, and all the packaging is waste.”

But Potur advocates thinking broader than waste reduction by looking at the environment you inhabit as a whole, using everything that is available to its fullest. “Maybe in the future we can be 100 per cent Norwegian, or at least Scandinavian,” he says. “That’s the aim.”

“Our goal is always to be 100 per cent sustainable. And we’re increasing this every year.”

HIMKOK BAR Storgata 27, 0184 Oslo, Norway W: himkok.squarespace.com/contact OPENING HOURS: Sunday-Thursday: 5pm-3am Friday-Saturday: 3pm-3am