Restaurant Schrøder

For readers of Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole novels, Restaurant Schrøder is not simply an old restaurant in Oslo. It is Harry Hole's local. Located at Waldemar Thranes gate 8 on St. Hanshaugen, Schrøder appears repeatedly throughout the crime series as the place where the troubled detective drinks, eats, thinks through cases and occasionally tries – usually without much success – to escape whatever personal or professional disaster currently surrounds him. Unlike many locations associated with fictional characters, Schrøder was not invented by Nesbø. It is a real restaurant, and much of the atmosphere described in the books was already there long before Harry Hole arrived.

Jo Nesbø introduced Harry Hole in The Bat in 1997, beginning what would become one of Scandinavia's most internationally successful crime series. Although Hole travels far beyond Norway in some of the novels, Oslo remains at the centre of his world, and Schrøder became one of its most recognisable locations. The detective lives nearby in Sofies gate in the books, making the restaurant a natural neighbourhood haunt. Over the years, readers from around the world began seeking out the real Schrøder, turning an otherwise traditional Oslo restaurant into an unlikely literary landmark.

The setting fits Harry remarkably well. Schrøder belongs to the Norwegian tradition of the brun kafé, literally a “brown café” – an old-fashioned, unpretentious restaurant or drinking place with dark interiors, regular customers and little interest in fashionable redesigns. Its walls are decorated with large paintings by Sigurd Fosnes from the 1920s depicting old Oslo, including Enerhaugen, Telthusbakken, Youngstorget and Torggata. The dark wood, red seating and decades-old interior give the place exactly the slightly worn, lived-in atmosphere that readers associate with Harry's Oslo. Nesbø did not have to create the surroundings from scratch. He found them.

Restaurant Schrøder itself dates back to the 1920s. Hans Jacob Schrøder took over an existing café at Torggata 14 in 1925, and Restaurant Schrøder formally opened there the following year. When the building was demolished during redevelopment around Youngstorget in the 1950s, the restaurant moved to its present home at Waldemar Thranes gate 8 in 1956. One of Fosnes' paintings still shows the original restaurant in Torggata, meaning that a small piece of Schrøder's first home followed it to St. Hanshaugen.

The fictional Harry Hole eventually brought a real film crew through the doors. In March 2016, Restaurant Schrøder was used during production of The Snowman, the Hollywood adaptation of Nesbø's 2007 novel. Michael Fassbender played Harry Hole, with Rebecca Ferguson as fellow detective Katrine Bratt. More than one hundred members of the production descended on the restaurant during filming, and scenes between Fassbender and Ferguson were shot inside the familiar dining room.

The Snowman was released in 2017 and became notorious for reasons nobody involved would have wanted. Despite an impressive cast that also included Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Toby Jones, the film was savaged by critics and director Tomas Alfredson later revealed that production problems had left parts of the screenplay unfilmed. The movie itself may not have done Harry Hole any great favours, but for Schrøder it created something unusual: the fictional detective's real-life favourite restaurant was now also playing itself in a film about him.

That connection became even stronger with the Netflix series Jo Nesbø's Detective Hole, released in 2026. This time Tobias Santelmann took the role of Harry Hole, alongside Joel Kinnaman as corrupt detective Tom Waaler and Pia Tjelta as Rakel Fauke. The nine-part first season is primarily based on The Devil's Star, the fifth Harry Hole novel, and was created and written by Jo Nesbø himself.

Filming took place across Oslo between May and December 2024, involving 113 shooting days and more than 160 locations. Restaurant Schrøder was one of the locations Netflix specifically wanted to retain from the novels. Both interior and exterior scenes were filmed here, finally bringing Harry Hole's regular haunt to the screen in a production created by Nesbø himself. The shoot was hardly discreet. Tobias Santelmann later recalled that people passing the restaurant immediately understood what was being filmed, with spectators watching from buses, pavements and windows across the street.

Schrøder was also chosen as the location for the official press presentation of the series in May 2024. Jo Nesbø, Tobias Santelmann, Joel Kinnaman, Pia Tjelta and director Øystein Karlsen gathered inside the restaurant before posing for photographs outside. It was an obvious choice. After decades of existing in the novels as Harry's second living room, Schrøder had become one of the few physical places almost inseparable from the character.

The Netflix production also treated Oslo itself as an important part of the Harry Hole universe. Locations included Frognerbadet, Vigeland Park, Oslo Police Headquarters, Akerselva and numerous streets and buildings around the capital. But Schrøder occupies a different position from most of them. It was already part of Harry's life on the page long before cameras arrived, and both major screen adaptations have now returned to the real restaurant rather than replacing it with a set.

That is ultimately what makes Restaurant Schrøder interesting beyond its food or its age. A fictional alcoholic detective walked through its doors often enough on paper that readers began doing the same in real life. Then Hollywood arrived, followed years later by Netflix, and Harry Hole finally became a physical presence inside the restaurant that had inspired the books. Schrøder is still an ordinary neighbourhood restaurant – but it also happens to be one of the few places where Jo Nesbø's fictional Oslo and the real city genuinely overlap.