The Norse code

NORSE isn’t the most obvious ‘look at me’ and ‘scream it from the rooftops’ sort of restaurant. In fact, unless you’re in the know, it isn’t easy to find or even stumble across.

Its name isn’t emblazoned across the shop front because this is a café by day. But, after the cafe closes, chef Murray Wilson (a former Masterchef: The Professionals finalist) and his creative young team move in and open up in the same space one hour later as Norse.

Menus include dishes like squirrel croquettes, smoked eel with beetroot sorbet and pig’s head with cod sperm. Although loved by foodies for constantly pushing boundaries with its startlingly innovative dishes, for a while it looked like being one of Harrogate’s best-kept secrets.

But following a rave review by food critic Jay Rayner and being named runner-up Best Restaurant in the North in the Observer Food Monthly 2015 awards, word has got around. Bookings are up. The young bearded hipsters who have been hanging out here since it first opened two years ago have been joined by middle-aged broadsheet newspaper readers. Now it’s hard to get a table.

Murray, who moved to Harrogate when he was two years old, was raised by a single mum in straitened circumstances and confesses he didn’t know the first thing about good food when he was growing up.

“We were quite poor and it was a case of making do with what we had. I remember horrible dinners of crappy tuna fish risotto,” he says. It wasn’t until he went to Cornwall for the summer after leaving school at 17, and got a job washing dishes, that he discovered just how exciting food could be.

Murray, 31, who won the coveted Chef of the Year title at Harrogate’s Hospitality Awards last summer and has been named as ‘one to watch’ by Waitrose’s Kitchen magazine, admits that back then, while camping on the beach with his friends, he was pretty aimless, with no idea what he wanted to do with his life.

“When the chef asked me to stay on after the summer and prep for him, I loved it. Once I got into the kitchen it gave me a direction,” he says. “It wasn’t a great kitchen. But you had a purpose and business to do and it had to be done properly. And I saw people being creative.”

He came back to Harrogate to start a catering course while working in Rombalds restaurant in Ilkley, before moving to Claridge’s where he worked under Gordon Ramsay. “It was hard work but good training, very disciplined,” he says.

It was while in his next job, working as sous chef at a gastro pub in Henley-on-Thames, that Murray’s boss persuaded him to join the thousands of others applying for the first Masterchef: The Professionals in 2008. Murray, who specialised in classic cooking at the time, was one of around 30 chefs selected to take part in the BBC TV show, impressing judges Michel Roux Jr and Greg Wallace but just losing out in the final, when he produced a much-praised seared carpaccio of tuna alongside his version of a rhubarb crumble.

He was only 24 and one of the highlights was working with Michelin-starred chef Michael Caines at Gidleigh park, who was an inspiration. “The whole experience was surreal. I really didn’t expect to get so far," he says.

Murray returned to Harrogate to run the Hotel du Vin restaurant after that, then worked in L’Atelier26 in London before coming home to Yorkshire to work as Frances Atkins’s sous chef in the Michelin-starred The Yorke Arms.

Having travelled to Sweden and been fascinated by the food he ate there, he became a regular at Baltzersen’s café, where the food was inspired by the Scandinavian heritage of owner Paul Rawlinson. Influenced by former Army officer Paul’s great grandmother’s hand-written 100-year-old recipe book, Baltzersen’s serves gravadlax, meatballs, waffles and cinnamon buns, all made from scratch on the premises.

Paul, 31, and the son of two chefs, grew up enjoying his Norwegian grandparents’ home-cooked food. “We ate lots of waffles, almond pastries and porridge thickened with arrowroot and cream,” he says.

He left the Army to set up the café after he and his Yorkshire-born dietician wife Katie decided to start a family four years ago. “I had always had the idea of running a café serving waffles and all the sort of food I had enjoyed as a child. I couldn’t get it out of my head,” he says.

Harrogate was the obvious location. “We were looking for somewhere to spend our life. I had moved around a lot with the Army but knew Harrogate and it’s such a lovely place, with lots of open spaces and on the doorstep of the Dales.”

Helped by some family investment, he ploughed all his savings into the business and admits it took a huge leap of faith. “It was in excess of six figures. It was, and still is, scary," he says. "This is all or nothing for me. Everything I have earned and then some is tied up in this business.”

He designed the simple bare wood Scandinavian style interior himself, inspired by cafes and bakeries he visited in Oslo. “Everything is clean and functional and does what it is supposed to do.” The café was an instant success.

Norse came about after the two men got talking, discussing Murray’s plans for a restaurant of his own. “I felt quite stifled and wanted to branch out and do my own thing,” says Murray. So they decided to use the evening café space to create an exciting new eating place.

Norse doesn’t do starters, main courses or sides, just a choice of eight small savoury dishes and two sweet (diners are advised to pick three each) or a tasting menu of six dishes selected by the chef.

Murray and his team of young chefs are constantly exploring new ideas. “There are a lot of good chefs around," he says. "We read a lot of books and pay attention to what others are doing. There is a lot on Instagram.”

In the style of the famous Scandinavian restaurant Noma, there is much use of pickling, curing, fermenting and dehydrating in order to capture the flavour of fresh products out of season and Murray also enjoys foraging for unusual ingredients. “I am quite driven and always trying to improve. When you have a passion for it, you want to learn how to do it better and experiment with ways of doing things," he says.

In his review, Jay Rayner described Norse as ‘a bunch of young blokes cooking their hearts out’, concluding: “Norse feels like a moment, like the thing these guys are going to do before they go on and do the real thing they’re going to do somewhere else. So book in now. Trust them.”

With a turnover of £80,000 last year, Paul agrees they have the potential to do more. “We have the capacity to push the restaurant even further,” he says.

Murray has even won his proud mother Angela over to his style of food. “She has been a lot and always tries something different," he says. "She loves it."

• Baltzersen’s/Norse 22 Oxford St, Harrogate HG1 1PU; W: norserestaurant.co.uk; W baltzersens.co.uk; T: 01423-202363