Magu — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

It’s hard to write a poor review for a seemingly stellar place, but there is so much wrong with the experience at Magu that I cannot in good conscience let others suffer.

I will first caveat that Helsinki lacks vegan options and if you’re a local, this is perhaps as good as it gets, so sure. But as a traveler, save your money and your taste buds and go eat anything else.

Magu has everything to be a good experience, but what leads it to fail most spectacularly is the execution. All the little botched details that added up to an unpleasant time. For example, you are offered a 10 or 13 course menu but the food actually comes in 5 courses. You just get multiple things per course sometimes, but these mini dishes do not at all work well together and while you eat the first, the rest get cold and stale (or melt). Additionally, you keep your cutlery for the entire meal, contaminating each successive “course” with the flavors of the previous one. And you get no place to put your used cutlery between dishes other than the bare table. The restaurant is serving something that I would call European style food. And they do so in a fine-dining, tasting menu style, but they also play jarringly loud salsa music that does not at all go well with the entire experience. There’s more, but in sum, the execution of the experience is shockingly poor.

Now, the food (this is a restaurant after all). I would sum it up as mediocre. Nothing was terrible but nothing was great either. Some dishes bordered on unpleasant (e.g., seaweed empanada, celeriac Wellington) and some had shockingly bad elements that ruined the dish (e.g., bone dry sponge in the deconstructed Black Forest cake dessert, “gnocchi” that were actually just pieces of fried potato). None were pleasantly surprising. Almost all were eaten cold or stale due to their coursing.

When I booked Magu I was delighted at the idea of a 10+ course tasting menu experience for only 80 euros. After dining here, I feel like I wasted my money and regret having learned this...

Disappointment, unfortunately can't recommend. Would've loved to recommend the place as it has cool vibes. Went there for the NYE menu. Got an email before arriving that asked us to arrive on time. We arrived just on time. After our arrival (20:00 sharp) we were asked to move outside to wait for TWO minutes. After waiting for nearly 20 minutes outside in the cold someone finally allowed us in. I believe they forgot about us and only came after they saw us still standing outside :D Not the best start. The food was okay, the starters were lovely and so were the gnocchis. Other than that, not bad but not great either. My wine-pairing was a failure too. I didn't get my 2nd wine until I asked for it by myself, and then it was too late already, I already ate almost all of the food the wine was supposed to be paired with) There were also some courses that were brought to our table without any explanation of what they were (which is kind of a big deal for a tasting menu IMO).

To end the night, we were supposed to go to a club but couldn't go as my stomach was hurting a lot after the menu. Not worth the price.

Overall the staff were nice, maybe too busy which led to these mistakes, plus we were never asked how we felt about the menu or so. Just got asked if we had a favorite course,...

Extremely disappointed 😞 Not value for money. 140 euros for two people. Service was really poor and the dessert was terrible. Frozen solid raw cake with grainy watery 'sorbet' and sabayon was a utter failure. It was couple of fresh berries in a puddle of cream garnished with a brittle. Other things like the server repeatedly wiping sweat off their face onto their T shirt during the service exposing their stomach each time. Chef seemed to be overworked and kitchen understaffed as each dish took over 30 plus minutes to reach the table. We had great hopes for our anniversary meal but were totally let down by the experience. We were suggested a sampling menu and had pre requested non garlic which we were told would be no problem. Apparently it was as we only got to try a few dishes compared to the menu offered. Other later tables got served before us and even when we paid the bill we got no thank you from the server. Terrible service. Also the table we had was sandwiched between the toilets, so lots of customers coming and going was troublesome, the smell from the toilet also came to our table area. Do not sit in the middle area between kitchen and main restaurant seating areas with the three tables of two. Not worth the price we paid. Felt really let down.....