Life of a photographer in pictures
La bella macchina. Ferrari California, the beautiful open top sports car.
City architecture in Kamppi.
Pizza from Krog Madame in Kamppi. Great food and nice atmosphere.
Spring light. Comes from an angle more often than not.
Small and almost pocketable. The 1 inch sensor cameras are really good nowadays. And every generation is better and better.
Just a quick post to remind those of you who are living in Finland about the City -web magazines campaign for eating with a bargain price of 10€ in the bigger cities of Finland. More info in the link.
A quick glance on the street food festival that took place last weekend in Helsinki, aka Streat Helsinki Eats.
Lot of people camee to taste and enjoy great street food, all in all apparently something north of 30 000.
From the food truck, excellent Marrakesh inspired street food. Tasty, vegetarian dish.
“french fries” of mixed root vegetables. Yummy!
Tar-lemonade. Ah, lovely flavor!
Sausage-fest in the truest sense. These were hand-made, and lamb-meat in one of the sausage types. Pretty nice!
A hamburger, the definate street food for the ages. This one was filled with yellow-muschrooms (kanttarelli). A Swedish food truck the source of it!
All in all a wonderful day, albeit very cold and windy.
Streat Helsinki Eats was a street food festival that had a huge amount of partakers in the weekend in Helsinki. Great food, social life, cold weather!
Sometimes the simplest things are the best. Take for instance food. It does not need to be always mega-hyper complicated to taste great.
This was just a moments thought and a few minutes of preparation. Fresh asparagus, mashed potatoes with a spot of cream and butter 🙂 and fresh veggies on the side. Cottage cheese to give some protein. A bit of work to get the potatoes peeled and a boiled, all in all from preparation to the plate in under 25 minutes. The taste, well excellent is the word I would use!
As there is still recession or at least a period of very slow growth in the Finnish economy, it seems that the fine dining scene is suffering a bit. At the same time there seems to be a lot of new relatively affordable restaurants opened.
Which leads me to believe that people are more careful of their spending and this of course is great for the places where you can dine and drink and the bill will still be small enough to “digest” as well.
Which brings me to the restaurant called Nom which was opened a while back near Töölölahti and very near the railway station. A place to eat lunch in the day time and enjoy a bit of food and after work as well.
As Nom is located in a new building that opened to the customers in 2014 the restaurant space is open, beautiful and spotless. There is a view toward the Music house on the otherside and the railroad to the other.
The menu consists of street food style things so there is for example hamburgers and hot dogs which are of course served as you would in a restaurant. Most portions can be ordered in small and normal sizes. Tje prices very competitive.
I went to test the beetleroot-halloumi burger (no meat this time).
I ordered in the normal size but I would think the small would be great for the ladies.
The fillings aa well as the bread were very good and not too wet with mayonnaise. Top marks.
The dessert is a changing affair so you need to ask the waiters. On the day the choice was a pannacotta or rockyroad. For the sake of testing I had both and especially the pannacotta was really good.
All in all a very positive feeling and I will visit again.
To the Nom web page
Last weekend Kaapelitehdas (old Cable factory) hosted the Nordic Street food carnival. Obviously a bit of a misnomer as it was indoors in the big old factory hall. Mostly due to our lousy weather I guess. 🙂 Anyway as a lover of food I naturally just had to partake in the action.
A few photos from the event as follows:
As you can see the space is quite big. . There were a lot of people and nice music, nice athmosphere. And the light was fantastic, with the huge windows and the sun shining from just the right direction.
There was food from different countries, street gastro had some great meaty food on sale.
Don’t you just love that sunlight?
Ah, decision making time.
HC Dog ie a hot dog place.
The hot dog was excellent. I loved everything about it. I would say the best hot dog I have eaten in Finland ever. Great spices as well. Right size meets right price.
Falafel, with hummus that was as good as the ones I have eaten in the middle-east. Great!
Gotta love the available serving languages. No Finnish in sight!
The roll kebab from the multilingual guys. Great kebab, but very very hot. Thats some serious Habanero in there!
Best way to finish eating is to enjoy a cup of good coffee. This was by the local coffee roastery called Helsingin Kahvipaahtimo. Espresso to die for.
All in all, a great way to eat!
One of the best things about Finland in the autumn is the fact that the forests are full of treasures. Blueberries, wild strawberries and rasberries etc.
For me one of the highlights are of course mushrooms which are such a delight to find and cook as well. Todays catch in the basket. Pure bliss!!
In Finland as well as Sweden it is customary to have big parties and enjoy eating crab amongst friends and family. Of course it is also a good excuse to drink wine or even snaps of vodka..
It is also a smells a bit of the old class-system as it is very much a thing of the more wealthy people (more and more also the normal middle-pay people as well).
Still, it is very much a Finnish thing to do in the autumn when the season for crab is here.
The eating is very much a messy affair with very little meat to be eaten from one crab. The main Part to eat is in the rear and then a bit in the scissors. There is also a delicious fluid in the crab which is customary to be sucked out.
The crab are usually served alongside toast and are eaten as an apperative as it is not very filling.
Excellent meat to eat as main course after enjoying the time spent playing with the crab..
And a nice dessert. Perfection.
This nice three-course dinner was eaten at restaurant Sunn beside the Senate square in the center of Helsinki.
Sometimes the best ideas and the best things to come as a spur of the moment thing. Like today, I had no plans to eat out at all, however a small shift in the timetables decreed firstly a visit to Herttoniemenranta and secondly a need to eat something for it would be late until home and the fridge beckoned.
So randomly to see if there was a place to get some good food in Herttoniemenranta. This part of Helsinki is a beautiful new side of an older neighborhood called Herttoniemi. Just about 10minutes away from the city center.
In this same area there is of course pizzerias, kebab places etc. as well as one of the finest Greek restaurants in Helsinki. Also a great Italian called Il Faro. Indeed the Italian was the first I thought of. As my readers will know, I love pasta and pizza in pretty much all possible forms. So a natural choice.
However the Italian was almost empty and forlorn looking. And just a small walk from it, on the other side of the canal,a Nepalese restaurant where I had never been to..
So naturally, this was another great option and as the day was proceeding with “a lets just wing it” attitude, it was the choice to go there. A nice looking Himalayan restaurant the Mantra had also a nice small terrace in front. As summer is short and the weather was fine, outside eating was the proper course of action to take.
After a time of browsing the menu an order was made for a fully vegetarian menu. Above is the starter. A small but great tasting dish called Sabziko Pakora. Deep fried vegetables. There was just enough spice in the dish. Excellent starter.
The main course, which consisted of the following, from the right:
PALUNGO CHANA Chick peas with fresh spinach and garlic in a medium spiced sauce.
JHANEKO DAL Lentils, fried onion, garlic, ginger, tomato and fresh coriander, medium spiced.
SHAHI PANEER Cottage cheese in a tomato, cream, cashew nut, almond fl our sauce.
Plus of course the usual sauce called raita, naan bread and rice.
Rice and Shahi Paneer. I usually prefer to eat only Naan and no rice at all but today I ate both, just to see the different tastes.
As for Nepalese food in Helsinki, my favorite places are Himsikhar in Hakaniemi and Base Camp in Kaisaniemi. Both offer excellent value in the taste/size/price triangle.
Restaurant Mantra was very close. In fact some of the dishes maybe better than Base Camp’s A la carte list. And as a whole the dishes were of great size. Medium spice was great for Finns, spicy yet not so hot you would be sweating and eating. The mildest was the cheese, the rest had a bit more bite. Great!
The view from the terrace.
The dessert. KULFI Nepalese sorbet made of pistachio nut and cashew, fl avored with saffron. A different taste from Finnish desserts, but worked very well. All in all the different parts of the menu worked together as they should to form a nice coherent package of culinary treat.
This is what the area looks like. The Restaurant Mantra is located left from the middle of the photo. A beautiful neighborhood. With great food.
To the restaurants pages Mantra
CuisineDeJere 