A.C. Perch's Thehandel Oslo

A.C. Perch's Thehandel has sold tea in Copenhagen since 1835 and came to Oslo in November 2014 with a counter in the food court of Steen & Strøm. The house's own account is that the teas never came into their own surrounded by the smells of a food hall, where tea is meant to be looked at and smelled before it is bought, so in November 2017 it opened its own shop and tearoom at Kirkegata 5, in the old Kvadraturen grid a block from Karl Johans gate. The shop keeps shop hours: ten to half past five on weekdays and ten to five on Saturdays.

The loose tea is priced per 100 grams and weighed to order, which keeps the range wide: breakfast blends and an organic Assam CTC at 124 kr, a Ceylon Earl Grey at 129 kr, single-garden First Flush Darjeelings from Margaret's Hope, Sungma and Turzum, a Nilgiri Frost and a Golden Nepal, Chinese greens from an Emerald Needle to an organic Tai Ping Hou Kui, Japanese kukicha and houjicha, Taiwanese and Chinese oolongs, white teas from China, Kenya, Darjeeling and Mozambique, a Guangxi yellow tea and the house's flavoured blends. Tea bags come in boxes of 10 and 25, and matcha has its own shelf of bowls and whisks.

The tearoom at the back is the other half of the address: tables are booked online, the menu runs to afternoon tea, and the same teas on the shelf are poured at the table, so a Formosa Red Oolong or an Oriental Beauty can be tried in a pot before the bag is weighed. The shop also hosts tea talks and tastings in the evening, sells the house marmalades meant for scones and its advent and year calendars from autumn, and ships web orders within Norway. For a first visit, come on a weekday afternoon, when the tearoom and the counter are both open.