2015 Dec. Finland. Dining in Helsinki.

Before the trip, friends were telling me Nordic food is boring, and I am gonna eat salmon, salmon and salmon. It didn’t help when on the first day upon arrival, the local tour guide shared that Finland is not big on farming and local produce is very limited. Undeterred and determined to make a good trip with good food memories, I did my homework and made several reservations at recommended restaurants in Helsinki before the trip.

First unplanned meal in Helsinki. Walked around the city to look for a place to eat and decided on this Italian restaurant La Famiglia, next to Stockmann’s. Food was pretty good but service was slow. It seemed after a few meals that slow is the norm, so best to just sit back, relax, get used to it, and enjoy! I chose the Italian set lunch at 35,70 € that came with appetiser, pasta, and dessert.

We had our first “nice” dinner at PASSIO on the first night upon arrival, reservation is required. The restaurant serves a-la-carte and 2 menus (3-courses at 49€ or 5-courses at 69€). Definitely better value to go for the set menu, which vary daily. Surprise is the word here (and probably all the other trendy restaurants in Helsinki), and you can either choose to know what you will be eating or leave it to the servers and chef until food is served. Dining in Finland is definitely not cheap, and this is about the price range for better restaurants.

Click for PASSIO website and reservation

Tired from shopping and looking for a place to have quick lunch, we decided to revisit La Famiglia to try the pizza, which looked good when we ate there previously. And yes, the pizza was delicious, wonderful crisp crust with fresh and flavourful ingredients. All pizzas come with their in-house tomato sauce, grated pecorino & mozzarella and rocket.

Another “nice” restaurant RAGU Ravintola reserved in advance. As with the other trendy restaurants, Ragu also serves a “surprise” 3-course, 4-course and 5-course menu at 45€, 51€, and 57€ respectively. The interior decor was minimal chic, and very tastefully done.

The complimentary bread box was awesome, I could have just ate the bread and nothing else for dinner. As we only managed to secure a late dining slot, I was exhausted and literally dozing off during dinner, and it certainly did not help when the food failed to impress. It was decently prepared and beautifully presented, but what turned me off was the heavy cream in the appetiser which did the opposite of what appetiser should, an even heavier creamy mushroom soup as second course, another dollop of cream served on the polenta for third course, more cream accompanied the meat course, and walah… of course dessert came with chilled cream. The multiple appearances of cream in the designed menu, showed the chef’s lack of understanding on the importance of varying and matching tastes and textures to create exciting yet balanced palette to tantalise tastebuds.

Click for RAGU website and reservation

I originally had another reservation at Juuri, another recommeded restaurant, but decided to cancel it, as I started to feel the fatigue of eating these degustation menus. Most restaurants are doing the trendy thing by serving morsels of flavourful food that are nicely prepared and beautifully plated, but in terms of understanding the ingredients and finding the right balance in pairing the flavours, there is still some way to go.