Andreea's fav restaurants in Helsinki
Anyone who wants good food in Helsinki should use Eat.fi - it's a great service offering comprehensive reviews of all restaurants in the city. But what if you're new in town or just visiting for a few days? Eat.fi is a little hard to scan. I have been asked many times to email a list of places to go to, and after having emailed it for more than 20 times, here it is online where I can update it easily.
Finnish food:
Very nice and light Finnish food, good selection of wines, great location overlooking the harbor. A little posh. Definitely not serving super traditional Finnish food.
Average bill with alcohol: 50 euros
Delicious Finnish food, again not traditional. It's a very small place so try to book in advance. Also, they only offer a fix menu which, if i remember correctly, is not vegetarian although the staff is really friendly and they would probably improvise something on the spot
Average bill with alcohol: 50 euros
Juuri is famous for its finnish tapas - also called sapas (suomi + tapas). It's great to go there and order 7 or 10 small sapas about 4 euros a pop - there's a lot of variety and different tastes. I would not recommend getting the main courses - they're just a  bigger sized portion of one of the sapas.
Average bill with alcohol: 40 euros
Hard core Finnish food. Go there for the salmon soup, hash and meatballs - huge portions, should fill you up for the rest of the day. Don't expect fancy wines or deserts.
Average bill with alcohol: 25 euros
Not a Finnish food restaurant per se. However, they serve the best meatballs with mashed potatoes and jam in Helsinki. The atmosphere is very unpretentious and the rest of the food is fantastic, boasting more flavors and tastes.
Average bill with alcohol: 25 euros
Amazing lunch place, extremely delicious and extremely cheap. Huge portions of homemade food at amazingly low prices.
Average bill: 12 euros
European food
La petit maison - Fine dining, French cuisine
Run by a French guy, the restaurant is the size of a living room *read make reservations.* There are a few menus to choose from. The menus change all the time as the guy adapts them based on the season of certain ingredients in France. When I went, it was cider season in france so we drank a wonderful homemade cider and a lot of the dishes were prepared with cider as well. Also - not cheap. At all.
Average bill with alcohol: 100 euros
Postres - Fine dining, European
Famous for their desert menu - do you think you can take a dinner of 6 or 7 desert dishes? If yes, that's the place for you. It's great to go just for the experience. If you don;t have a sweet tooth, you can get a normal menu, equally delicious. I would recommend getting the wine menu as well, the wines are handpicked to go with the dishes. It's great.
Average bill with alcohol: 100 euros
Demo - Fine dining, european
Fancy expensive food. It was good but overpriced for what you get. If you want to burn 100 euros on a meal, I would recommend any of the other fancy restaurants above. But it has a michelin star so i thought it should be in the list.
Average bill with alcohol: 100 euros
Same owner as Kuurna, wonderful interior and delicious food. People online are lately complaining that the prices went up disproportionately with the quality of the food. I have not been there in a while but at the time, I did not think it was overpriced for what you get
Average bill with alcohol: 50 euros
Bistro 15 - Italian
The *only* excellent Italian food in Helsinki, especially when it comes to pasta dishes and risottos but not only. Lovely wine, great atmosphere and not very crowded. Every time I have been I did not need a reservation. All my Italian colleagues swear by it, which means a lot because they refuse to have Italian food anywhere else.
Average bill with alcohol: 50 euros
Serata - Italian
Good Italian food - a bit on the expensive side. One of the few decent Italian restaurants in Helsinki. Some of their tables are in the restaurant windows, so everyone on the street gets to stare at your food.
Average bill with alcohol: 50 euros
Wellamo - European
Great food and nice location - close to the water. The restaurant is a little dark, not sure if there's a terrace during the summer.
Average bill with alcohol: 40-50 euros
Rivoletto - Italian
Inexpensive pizza + pasta place. I would not have pizza anywhere else in Helsinki.
Average bill with alcohol: 30 euros
Bar 9 and Bali hai - European cuisine
Located in the hip part of helsinki, these three bar/ restaurants are my absolute favorite *together with Tori.* They're great places to have dinner and drinks with friends. The food is amazing, decently priced and in big portions. I recommend the hamburger and the goat cheese sandwich at Bali Hai.
Average bill with alcohol: 25 euros
Cafe Trocadero - Frech-ish
Lovely lunch place run by a French Morrocan dude. There are only a couple of dishes on the menu at one time, but it's a good selection for vegetarians and otherwise.
Average bill: 15 euros
Asian food
Ata bar - Turkish cuisine
Don;t expect your meal in time, but expect a great meal. I have no idea where that guy gets his ingredients. Hummus is great and so are these turkish cheese pastries called bureks. Maybe the only place in Helsinki where the staff does not speak fluent english and there are not enough menus in English. On  the upside, there's bellydancing.
Average bill with alcohol: 35 euros
Farouge - Lebanese
Really tasty lebanese food, friendly staff, serves dinner until late. Not cheap but not really expensive either.
Average bill with alcohol: 55 euros
Kabuki - Japanese
The only decent place in Helsinki to get good sushi as well as other warm japanese food. The owner is obsessed with Canadian hockey, star wars and Miyazaki movies, which accounts for a very strange decorum. Book way in advance, the place is crazy popular.
Average bill with alcohol: 40 euros
Dong Bei Hu -Â Chinese
Absolutely gorgeous chinese food, my favorite eating place in helsinki. Go for the spicy lamb, the beef on an iron plate or their tofu dishes. The cheaper fried rice/ noodle dishes are not that special. Needless to say, don't order wine in a chinese place :)
Average price with beer: 30 euros
In terms of coffee shops, I would recommend:
Delicato - awesome sandwiches
Tasty Deli - good coffee and sandwiches. only open 10-16 during weekdays. Small place, not a lot of options.
Kaffe Centralen- the absolute best coffee in Helsinki.
Cafe Engel - nice cakes in the tourist downtown, nice atmosphere
Espresso Edge - soup and sandwich place, interestingly decorated, close to the city center but still a place for the locals
Regatta - tiny coffee shop next to the water. go there for the view.
Cafe Carusel - touristy but great view to the water
Cafe Java - good coffee and smoothies in the city center
For a quick take-away coffee, the chain Wayne's sells decent stuff. All the other places tend to suck.
Lastly, I recommend cocktails at American bar (ask for Lost in the Woods, a wonderful berry cocktail) and the bar in Hotel Kämp. The American bar is at the bottom of a building called Torni. You can take the elevator up to the last floor and enjoy a wonderful view of the city. Don't stay in the bar at the top though - the drinks are average in quality and over the top in price.
