Travelling and eating in Europe @ Not Quite Nigella

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Europe Eating & Travel

Kämp Café & Bar

One of the most irresistible things to do for some people in Helsinki is apparently to sun yourself outside of a cafe, Parisian style, watching the passing traffic, face upturned to the sun as if watching a giant movie screen. My husband thought that the sight of it was so hilarious that he took pictures of them. It’s where Helskinki goes to pose and posture.

Hotel Kämp is Helsinki’s premier hotel, built in 1887 by Carl Kämp and then rebuilt in 1965. It is the place for the wealthy, social elite (rooms start at €500). It is steeped in history {http://www.cosmopolis.ch/travel/helsinki/hotel_kamp_111.htm} with its rich and sumptuous surroundings, after a hard day pounding the cobblestones touristing, we enter the hotel, delighted that the serenity.

The menu is surprisingly reasonable given the surroundings. I am itching for some seafood so my husband and I share the Royal Seafood platter €39.80, the crayfish soup €9.80 and my sister has a burger craving so she orders the €21.

The soup arrives first and is spooned from a small silver tureen into a chic patterned rim bowl. The soup is richly and deeply flavoured, an ode to the crayfish. A definite winner.

It takes a while before the seafood platter and burger arrives, we’re not sure why as we are eating early and it’s relatively empty. We take some time to peruse our opulent surroundings, oddly there are huge shag pile rugs under the tables, we can only think what kind of cleaning nightmare they would be should a diner spill something on them or drop crumbs.

The bread given to us is lovely and fresh, the butter simply gorgeous as Finnish butter is uniformly.

Our platter and burger finally arrives, the platter piled high with prawns (smoked and unsmoked), oysters, 1/2 a small lobster (and we mean small) and mussels. We dig into the platter, the 2 precious oysters are large and creamy, the mussels sweet albeit small, the lobster doesn’t have a great deal of lobster meat so we savour what is there and the prawns are unusual-the smoked version being extremely smoked (we find that Finnish smoked items are very smokey in flavour) and the natural prawns sweet with soft shells.

What is interesting is the amount of tiny sweet roe clinging to each prawn, it’s very sweet and delicious. The 4 sauces are: Aioli, a runny thousand island, a red onion vinaigrette and a blood orange sauce. The aioli is my favourite although the red onion vinaigrette is a natural for the oysters.

The burger is actually not made up with a burger patty, it’s thin slices of rareish beef. Blythe finds it strange and not quite burger like enough. Also the chips are very dry and usually a chip lover, she leaves most behind.

The restaurant starts to fill, with elegantly dressed people seeking a drink or a meal outside of the brief rain shower outside. And of coursethere are still people outside watching the crowd scuttle past with umbrellas, like watching a movie.

Kämp Café & Bar

OPENING HOURS

Mon – Fri 11.30 – 24.00 a la carte menu
Sat – Sun 12.00 – 24.00 a la carte menu

BAR OPENING HOURS

Mon-Wed 10.00-01.00
Thu-Fri 10.00-02.00
Sat 11.00-02.00
Sun 11.00-01.00

HOTEL KÄMP
Kämp Café & Bar, Pohjoisesplanadi 29, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Tel. +358 9 5840 9530
Fax. +358 9 5761 1925
e-mail: sales@hotelkamp.fi

6 comments | July 17th, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Fazer Café, Helsinki Finland

Fazer café is the Finnish equivalent of an afternoon tea salon. Started by Karl Fazer (pronounced “Fahtzer”) in 1891, it is said to be the place where “the female population of the city would spend time, taking certain pleasure in using up the last pennies of their fathers, brothers, fiancees and admirers for indulging in huge amounts of sweet delicacies” and indeed looking around there are ladies lunching on salads, sandwiches or divine little cakes and chocolates. Beautifully merchandised, the windows beckon with tantalising colours and delicate morsels. When we had walked past on the Sunday when they were closed, I practically drooled in front of the window so the next day a plan was made to come here. And if anyone should derail these plans, they will incur my wrath!

The shop is broken down into two areas, on the left are the cakes and savouries and on the right are the chocolates and jellies. There is an area towards the rear of each in which to eat. It reminds my sister of the Wolseley although curiously they have self service which is apparently quite a Scandinavian thing. You take a tray, select your food from behind the glass cabinet and they pass the food to you and you then pay at the front, much like the nicest cafeteria you’ll ever come across. My sister and I select some open face sandwiches to share and my husband chooses to partake in the lunch soup buffet €8 for a choice of three soups: a vegetable one, a meat soup and a seafood soup with bread and butter. There are also a selection of salads and of course the gorgeous cakes to choose from.

We choose a Russian open faced sandwich with fish paste and eggs €8.20 (Voileipa Sill ala Russia), a chicken sandwich €7.30 (Resissumies Kana) and a prawn and egg sandwich €7.70 (Voileipa Katkarapu).

Voileipa Sill ala Russia €8.20
The Voileipa Sill ala Russia is fairly bland and needs a little salt and pepper. It’s certainly creamy and piled high with toppings though and tastes mostly of eggs.

Resissumies Kana €7.30
The Resissumies Kana E7.30 is delicious, the chicken moist and sweet and the topping perfectly balanced. It’s my favourite of the lot although it sounded less exotic.

Voileipa Katkarapu €7.70
The Voileipa Katkarapu is packed with small fresh prawns which sit on top of a cloud of thousand island dressing. It’s piled high with prawns and great value.

Meat soup (part of soup buffet) €8

I try some of my husband’s soups, the vegetable one is a creamy potato and leek soup, the meat one is particularly good with halved meatballs amongst vegetables whilst the seafood is a little disappointing, tasting mostly of celery and carrot with some tiny prawns scattered throughout it.

Berry cake €5.40

Savouries savoured, we move onto the sweets. I choose the perfect dome of berries with the delicate sprig of gold leaf redcurrants on top. I also select a slice of traditional Finnish caramel cake and a section of apple slice and a sweet roll to takeaway for our drive to the countryside.

The Berry cake is divine, filled with white chocolate with a sweet berry jam centre it is the perfect level of sweetness. The fine covering of sweet jellied berry is divine against the rich white chocolate centre. It is topped with redcurrants flecked with gold leaf. Simple perfection.

Traditional Finnish Caramel Cake €5.30

The Finnish caramel cake is coated in a thick icing of caramel, the centre sponge slices filled with caramel too. The sponge itself is a bit dry and tastes a little stale but the caramel helps somewhat.

Reinen Omenapiirakka €3.20

Later we try the apple slice, it’s fairly light on apples but tastes richly of custard powder.

Voisilmapulla €2.50
The sweet roll is topped with a sweet cheese and sugar and then baked to produce a crispy sugar crust. It is also strongly flavoured with cardamom which gives it an interesting touch.

On our drive to the Finnish country home, I lie back and think of the other cakes that I didn’t try. Yes I will be back for them…

Fazer Café

Kluuvikatu 3, 00100 Helsinki
Tel +358 20 729 6702 Fax +358 20 729 6700
E-mail: fazer.cafe@fazer.fi

http://www.ravintolaopas.net/fazerkluuvi

Mon-Fri 7:30-22, Sat 09-22

12 comments | July 16th, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Finland: Jaskan Grilli, Helsinki’s secret late night address

When the NY Times writes about a humble Hot Dog stand you tend to regard it a bit differently. For not only is it a place that sells hot dogs and all things to be consumed when drunk at night, it is apparently much more than that. It is said that if you stood in front of there for 3 days, you’d see the who’s who and who’s not of Finland. Celebrities and politicians stop by Jaskan Grilli at some time to satisfy their alcohol induced cravings for meat, salt and fat. Normally placid Finns have been known the break out in fights in the queue.

Due to a conflict of plan schedules and unreliable international SMSs we are meeting my sister at midnight after her plane from London arrived in at 11pm. And now the fun has only started. We get on the bus at my husband’s uncle and aunt’s house at 11pm and it appears that the party has already started on the bus. A huge group of drunk youths (doesn’t that phrase make me sound old?) are yelling and popping beers open on the back of the bus.Their rowdiness doesn’t faze the driver and neither does the beer which has been spilled all over the seat and aisles of the bus-behaviour that would get you thrown off the bus in Australia goes unheeded. Both girls and boys hold open bottles of beer or alcohol and walking down the street swaying and singing loudly is de rigeur.

12am Helsinki

It’s also the time of the year where the sun sets at 11pm and rises again at 3am, giving it an even more surreal atmosphere. We’ve been up for over 24 hours having woken at 4am to go to Tsukiji fish markets with naps taken in between but the fact that the sun is shining tricks our bodies into believing that it is much earlier than it is.

The queue

The Finns are friendly if you stop and ask them directions (and we did several times) and whilst my husband speaks some Finnish, we resorted to getting directions in English to save time. We’re told that Jaskan Grilli is near Storyville restaurant and that it is a white cube-if lost again everyone knows it apparently. My husband’s cousin of course knows it but is baffled by the NY Times review of it, to him it’s just a Hot Dog stand.

Menu and ordering

Click here to read the full story

17 comments | July 14th, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Ladurée Salon de Thé – Champs Elysées

Planning a trip to Europe next year is certainly fun and whilst I have already visited London and Paris, my husband hasn’t. One of the highlights in Paris was Ladurée, a gorgeous tea salon on the Champs Elysées and I knew that I was due for a return visit. So in order to get myself excited about it, I dug up some old pictures taken of the cakes and wrote about my first visit there a while back.

At Ladurée, they have a “no photographs” policy so whilst I would’ve loved to have shown you gorgeous photos its a policy they do enforce. Other customers tried using their mobile phones and they were asked politely but firmly to put them away. So you’ll have to take my word for it that the selection of cakes available for take away is breathtaking. The picture is from the Ladurée website and does look somewhat like it is except without the swarm of people in front of the display.

The system of ordering cakes to take away is somewhat chaotic, you stand in a line firmly pressed against the display several people deep and order with someone behind the counter and when you get to the end you pay with someone else. But it also means that choosing a cake and seeing what’s available is hard as everyone is pressed against the display and if you’re a point and babble-in-badly-accented-French kind of person like me, you may have to point to the item that you want from quite far away.