For lunch, we went to Ravintola Timbaali, a place where we had eaten a couple of times before and if memory serves us right, had enjoyed immensly. It’s situated right in the heart of the old town with rustic interior and a nice covered summer inner courtyard where we sat to enjoy the sunny and balmy, +25C weather. We managed to secure a table minutes before the restaurant was packed with people (many of them foreign tourists on a daytrip) and more in waiting mode queuing outside. Reservations for the summer evenings are a necessity, I’m sure. Timbaali is best known for its snails, which are home-grown and come in a number of different varieties.

Despite their staple food, it turned out Sarita was the only one who went with snails by choosing six snails in parmesan pistachio-butter (€9,80). Not a big fan of molluscs myself, I can only take her word that they were delicious.

The rest of us, it being lunch and all, actually skipped all appetizers, despite our waitress’s good attempt in trying to lure me into a Kir Royal after hearing me mention it.. To a potential horror of old-fashioned wine drinkers, we chose a bottle of the house white wine, a thoroughly delicious Chilean Morandé Pioneo Chardonnay (€28,50), despite all of us ordering meat as a main course. The wine list was obviously a careful selection of suitable wines with our Chardonnay being the perfect, lively wine for a warm summer day.

For the entrées, I chose a fillet of beef with herbs and smoked potato bundle (€23,20, below first) while Sarita went with fillet of red deer with a bolete bake and roasted shallots (€23,80, below second). Both were, for the lack of a better word, perfect. My medium beef was exquisitely cooked, savory and wonderfully tender. Really wonderful, simple dishes of great quality – by far the best meat I’ve had in a long time.

For dessert, all of us were unanimous in that it was Crème brûlée (€6,50) that we wanted to try – a good choice, although I doubt the other ones would’ve been any worse. The brûlée was beautifully caramelized and perfectly moist, making for a delicious finish for the meal.

I must say that the price-quality ratio here was far superior to that of Restaurant Piha where we went to earlier this week (see the previous review). With the service impeccable (despite the Finnish curse of multiple-waitresses-per-table-problem) and the food close to perfection, there is not much to blame here. However, due to the paper napkins outside and some inconsequentially small details I’ll bring down the overall evaluation to “only” 5- out of 5 :)

Overall, quite possibly the best lunch I’ve ever had, at least in Finland. If in Porvoo, this is the place to go to – even if you’re not a snail-fan.

First, a couple of words about the physical appearance of the place. The overall impression is a nice & clean environment with some quite interesting wooden door-decor and a big courtyard-style center with a glass ceiling. The setting worked nicely enough without being intrusive, so that was good. Looking more closely at the setup, the first snag that one hits is the cleanliness of the utensils and the glasses – the washing and polishing certainly could’ve been done better with clear watermarks on each.

What about the service? As is unfortunately quite common in Finnish restaurants, the table is served by multiple waitresses in seemingly random order. Often this creates more confusion than warranted, but here the service was mostly smooth; there was no excessive waiting as the old dishes were taken away and the next courses brought in in a timely manner. The services was friendly and worked well, but there was not even a hint that the waitresses would top up wine or water glasses – that was obviously left to the diners themselves to do. Of the menu, I liked the fact that it wasn’t overly long while it still offered plenty of choices. Also the wine list emphasized, quite appropriately, Italian wines with only a few selections from elsewhere. Nothing too fancy made it to either list but I consider that a good thing.

Then to the food. For starters, I went with the Fruity chicken salad Tandor with Yoghurt sauce with curry and honey (€9,50). The salad looked rather big for a starter salad, but it was very good so it didn’t really matter :) The presentation was quite good, but a bit impractical as it was very vertically-oriented. The yoghurt-based sauce went well with the salad and gave it a nice, rather neutral, taste which helped cleanse the palate with the appetizer (blueberry-flavored grappa with sparkling wine).

The main course selection was difficult, with Sarita’s choice of Scampi on a skewer with Parmesan white wine risotto & chili-lime oil (€20,40) sounding very enticing. I ended up trying the Saltimbocca with marsala sauce; Veal schnitzel filled with parma ham and sage, potato wedges (€23,80). From the little I got to taste of the Scampi skewer and the risotto, they were excellent. The veal snitchel was also very good – although the real thing wasn’t filled with parma ham but rather wrapped in parma ham. The dish could’ve used some more color, there might’ve been a bit too many potatoes and the few vegetables looked liked they had been overcooked a little, but the schnitzel itself was done nicely and went along well with the parma ham. The presentation of the scampi skewer was nevertheless better.

The dessert was nothing short of mouthwatering – my Creme Caramelle alla Amaretto (€6,20) was baked perfectly and the sauce was very nice. I also heard nothing but praise about Sarita’s fresh and brisk Lemon sorbet in sparkling wine (€4,80), a different kind of refreshing dessert. The presentation of both desserts was simple but flawless.

As the mentioned price points would indicate, I consider Piha to be in the middle/upper middle class of Helsinki restaurants – by no means cheap, but definately not what one would consider expensive either. As the food was mostly good and the service wasn’t bad either, it was a thoroughly pleasant experience even with some of the details being a bit off. With the decent price level, I would recommend Ravintola Piha at 4- out of 5.

But then again, things could be worse. I do photograph my food occasionally, so the heck with it. So I said yes.

I don’t know about superbly written stories, but I’ll write stories – probably mostly restaurant reviews. And despite the theme of the site, I can’t promise there wouldn’t be occasionally some drama. Btw, a word of reading advice is likely in order; whenever I mention “we”, the other person involved is, unless otherwise indicated, my wife Sarita.

But enough with the introductions.

Henri’x BBQ House in Kamppi

One evening a couple weeks back, we decided to give another Kamppi newcomer a try: Henri’x BBQ House. I was hoping they’d fare better than their neighbor Minos (review of which is coming up later) and, being one of the few truly BBQ/steak-oriented restaurants in the city, expectations were actually quite high.

The surroundings suffer a bit from the restaurant being essentially in a mall; however, Henri’x also has a nice all-glass semi-terrace from where you could observe the life around the Kamppi center. As was expected with all the concrete and tiles, this life consisted almost purely of skaters who had the open space completely under their control. And they weren’t great either. So not much in terms of a view (yet).

Once inside, we were shown to our table after some initial confusion as to where it is that we were supposed to be seated in the first place. There is not much internal decoration to speak of and the tables and chairs are, while comfortable, also very basic. The neon bull at the bar was quite nice, but that was about the extent of the interior décor.

At the tables, things seemed to be in order: nice cloth napkins and a clean set of glasses. No tableclothes, but that is perfectly understandable for a BBQ place. The physical menu itself, however, was flimsy – a piece of more or less crumpled paper, some haphazardly glued to a piece of cardboard.

From reading the menu, it’s immediately clear that this is not a place for vegetarians: in fact, the main courses are all steaks. The wine was interestingly classified on the menu with selections of only “decent – good – superb”. It turned out that there is a separate wine menu, too, something that wasn’t curiously brought to us before we asked for it. Our selection of wine, Ca’del Solo Big House Red, turned out to be a bit too weak to accompany the heavy food. Of course, this was purely our mistake and I’m sure the list would’ve offered better options.

But on with the real essence of the evening, the food. The starters sounded quite delicious with choices like coconut green curry-soup, but we felt like going straight for the meat, with the hopes that the portions are big enough. Sarita went with a chateaubriand (€22) with chilli butter. I was looking forward to testing the much-advertised BBQ sauce, so I chose the porterhouse steak (€38, though see note at the end) with that. Neither of us was asked how we wanted the steaks – this could either be a good or a bad sign.. After taking a little long to arrive, I was a bit disappointed to find out that my porterhouse steak was served pre-sliced and not as whole. But as soon as it came to the table, doubts about it being big enough vanished. There was lots of it. I mean lots, the photo does not do justice to it.

And, as it turns out, it was really quite good and tender. When bringing the portion, the waitress immediately offered to bring more BBQ sauce and taking her up on the offer was the right thing to do – the BBQ sauce was delicious. Doubts about the level of doneness were luckily unfounded: everything was cooked just right. Sarita’s chateaubriand also turned out just perfect, though the chilli butter could’ve used some chilli in it – a common problem in Finland. In any case, in terms of quality of food, the expectations were met or even partly exceeded.

There was a choice of three side dish selections; Basic, Classic and Modern. At least the Basic with potato wedges, simmered red cabbage and an onion-haricot bake was a good selection.

Then came the shocker, however: my portion was so big that I just could not down it all. This caused more mental anxiety than actual physical trauma – am I going to have to leave delicious meat on the plate? In the end, I had to condescend to admitting defeat: there was just no room for it all.

The dessert menu also sounded delicious, but anything more to eat was out of the question at this stage. When we got the check, I realized why I had trouble with the size of my portion. They had inadvertently brought me the porterhouse for two (€64, IIRC), which our waitress said is a whole kilogram of meat. What a relief. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about not being able to eat it all. The mistake was swiftly sorted out on the check. But of course, now I can’t be sure whether the porterhouse for one would’ve been big enough… Perhaps it’d still be safe to say that it would.

All in all, the service was quite good, and the occasional glitches (like not refilling our tiny water pitcher without asking, offering the table next to us food they didn’t order etc.) were something that I could live with. With the food also very good, it’s likely we’ll be back here – must try the starters and desserts next time, too.