Thursday 23 February 2012

Nokka Restaurant in Helsinki

Helsinki’s Food Revival

The city is a proud paradise of local produce, fish and meat and cooking that’s inventive and playful.

If there is a movement against the molecular gastronomy of the chef Ferran Adrià and his many adherents, Finland will lead the way. “I don’t like food tasting like a mess,” said Jussi Peisa, chef of the restaurant Loft in Helsinki. “Fish must taste like fish.”
To test his call for simplicity I try his “whole fried spring chicken” from a local farm. It’s roasted but otherwise as fresh-tasting as described. The crispy golden skin and tender meat meld beautifully with a buckwheat salad whose earthy, healthful taste is mitigated by a thin drizzle of sweet lemon and chervil syrup.

Loft’s menu discloses that Finland’s cuisine is not only about herring and reindeer, yet it bets on high quality local ingredients with a simple preparation. The global turn toward eating local food, is helping the Finns take a new pride in their insular and unsullied cooking.

You can find most of that you’ll eat for dinner laid out every morning at Market Square, down at the harbour. There, under a hundred battered umbrellas, vendors sell a colourful mosaic of the freshest fruits, vegetables and, fish.

One cannot resist to taste something adventurous there, but a terrine of reindeer liver with berry jelly, which is gamey and grainy was too “real” for my taste.
Recently, a bunch of independently owned, interesting, smaller bistros have blossomed.

A favorite is Juuri with the feel of an urban farmhouse. The food speaks to imagination, utility and restraint. Dark brown bread with specks of nuts is served with creamy carrot butter. The bistro serves a version of Finnish tapas called at Juuri sapas. Delicious was a roasted root vegetable called a swede that is sweet, tender and deep yellow in colour served with a cauliflower purée that’s light and creamy in exactly the same way as the carrot butter.

A bigger venue and more ambitious is Grotesk. Ari Ruoho, the chef, has an international take on his food. He serves salmon with a bright kaffir lime reduction; a Wiener schnitzel with hammered pea pods, lemon segments and capers and topped with a small slab of pickled herring just to to remind you that you are not in Munich. But again, the simple stands out. Ruoho’s roasted garlic soup is straightforward and satisfying, topped with a drizzle of green olive oil and a hint of foam from its recent whipping.

Nokka, owned by the Royal chain, has a bigger backer but also a room to play. Every local producer, is lovingly, fetishistically detailed in a brochure that comes with a map. Nokka’s executive chef, Marko Palovaara, works magic with his clear tomato soup which turns green once it is poured onto a small, egg-shaped scoop of goat cheese ice cream.
We finish the meal with some Finnish sherry, Sakasti 1998, which is pleasantly intense but thinner in texture than Spanish sherry. Helsinki is a small, safe and fragrant city, so you can drink as much as you like and walk back to wherever you’re staying.

HELSINKI ADDRESS BOOK

Grotesk
Ludviginkatu 10
Tel: (358) 10-470 2100
www.grotesk.fi

Juuri
Korkeavuorenkatu 27
Tel: (358) 9-635 732
www.juuri.fi

Loft
Yrjonkatu 18
Tel: (358) 9-4281 2500
www.ravintoaloft.fi

Nokka
Kanavaranta 7F
Tel: (358) 9-6128 5600

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