Mekong Ravintola — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

Before you go skipping on, Ravintola Mekong is vegan friendly :)

Nestled in behind Lastenlehdon Park, the opposite side of the tram stop. Ravintola Mekong Vietnamese restaurant tasty member of Helsinki’s Vietnamese Restaurants and is easily accessible by foot from Kamppi, or the 7 & 9 trams which stop across the road from the restaurant.

Arrive early enough, and down the street from the tram stop, check out Tieto-Nikkari Oy, open since 1979, it is one of Helsinki’s most venerable model shops. Stocking everything from model trains, to model cars, radio controllers, figures, dioramas, and all the required equipment, and a large range of foliage, building kits and scenery for building your models or railways.

Opened in October 2019, Mekong specialises in delicious Southwestern Vietnamese cuisine from the Mekong Delta. Mekong does a generous lunch buffet that is affordable for city workers with a lunch card, as well as everyone else. The restaurant has twice been nominated by My Helsinki Guide as amongst the best Vietnamese restaurants in Helsinki in 2020, and in 2022.

With fish and shrimp filled waterways, and centuries of its own agricultural traditions, with all year crops of vegetables, rice, and fruit. the abundantly fertile Mekong Delta is known as the ‘rice bowl’ of Vietnam, Marked by its freshness and diversity, the cuisine of the Mekong Delta is one of subtle fragrances, and natural sweetness.

At night, Mekong is relaxed, with a cosy selection of wine and beer. They’ve got Saigon beer, which suits me, as I really enjoy it. While available via Wolt, I don’t think that compares to the experience of eating in the restaurant.

I normally get one of the selection of Bun here (a Vietnamese noodle dish) and they are not only superb, they are very comforting. The Bun bo Hue is utterly fantastic, the meat perfect. The Goi Cuon summer rolls are great, and have a vegan variant. The Sup Hoanh thanh - homemade Vietnamese wonton soup is pretty special, and the perfect thing for a dreary grey day. Just don’t get it with someone and expect them to share once they’ve tasted it. The Cha Gio (springrolls) never disappoint.

While the menu has been updated and I’ve yet to work my way around the entire thing nor had a chance to try the regional classic Hu Tieu Kho with pork heart, pork liver, shrimp, pork sirloin, and quail eggs . The Vietnamese curry is tasty and light, a great lunch time dish. My favourites though, and possibly because I have a Bun addiction is the Bun thit xao - lemongrass stir-fried pork tenderloin with rice noodles and salad. The Bun bo nam Bo is also pretty damn amazing, and it is a tight war between the two, with one taking the others place each time I have them. It’s joy transformed into food.

Everything is delicious and very affordable. Especially for a restaurant pretty much in the centre of Helsinki. There is this cake they do also, I think, a honey cake? I’m not sure and I don’t have time to go and ask. But, if you have that with a Vietnamese coffee or just with a black coffee, it’s this sublime peaceful moment of dessert that’s like eating a slice of relaxation.

There is a vegetarian menu, and a vegan menu, and often vegan versions of many of the dishes.

Chef Nuong balances a menu of traditional classics as well as new dishes and interpretations. Mekong is family run, the restaurant is extremely child friendly. The owner is very friendly and warm. It really has a relaxed atmosphere that allows you to enjoy your food in peace. It can be hired for private events also.

In a city with great food and great restaurants - it can be hard to decide where to go, and you can easily fall into a familiar old role of the same places.

But whatever you’re doing, you should take the time to get to know the menu in Ravintola Mekong. The monster that resides in your stomach and makes you hungry all the time will be briefly sated and left very happy. Find it, eat yourself into a food coma, and tell them...

As someone who grew up eating hủ tiếu for breakfast, I have pretty good idea of what makes a good bowl of hủ tiếu. This dish's origin is from the southern part of Vietnam. The Mekong delta is blessed with fertilised land, rich rivers and sea full of delicacies. This dish really represents that abundance. There are many things going on in a bowl of hủ tiếu: from pork to prawn, from liver to quail egg, from fried onions to fresh vegetables. Even the broth should be made from not only pork bone stock but also seafood (in Vietnam we use dried prawns or squids). The more that go into the bowl, the harder it is to nail each ingredient and bring them altogether. That explains why it's difficult to find this dish in the West. There're so many ingredients which are time consuming to prepare, unattractive to local people, and perhaps financially unscalable.

Now you can understand my excitement when I heard that a restaurant in Helsinki offers hủ tiếu on their menu. I tried Mekong when it first opened a couple of years ago, and to be honest, wasn't impressed. As I said, it's hard to make good hủ tiếu and the version they served back then with daikon and carrot didn't cut it for me. It felt like someone attempted to make it at home, not bad but not great either.

Fast forward to this year when the covid-19 made it impossible to travel to Vietnam, I felt the urge to give Mekong another try. Not sure if it's because I haven't had hủ tiếu for too long, or if they actually improved their recipe, but the dish definitely tasted much better. I ended up come back almost every week to have it. It's still not great: vegetables are not enough (missing garlic chives and celery); the broth is missing seafoods to balance out the meatiness and salt; and most importantly, there are no condiments! I cannot have hủ tiếu without vinegar garlic and chilies! Besides, the quality is not consistent. Some day the broth was too salty, some day under seasoned, and someday spot on.

With all those being said, overall, I still consider their hủ tiếu to be pretty darn good and appreciate their effort to improve the dish and keep it on the menu. It's an understated dish, not well known in Europe, but very close to the heart of Southerners. It's crazy to see how much work can go into making this simple bowl of noodles, and I think they deserve some love for trying. I will come back for more hủ tiếu and try other of their...

We went there on the Duck Noodles day event. The food was too sweet, and unauthentic according to the original dish. Totally it was a new invention from the restaurant’s owner. But this is still not the worst part to tell about this place. Two of my friends were about to order the same duck noodles but the cashier said she’s not sure if there is enough for 2 and she had to go to the kitchen to ask the chef about that. She came back and said there was only one bowl left. She asked for a payment from my friend (1) for the duck noodle bowl. Another friend (2) was still looking at the menu to choose another dish without noticing the (1) person already paid for her dish. Later on, he ordered another meal and the cashier asked him to pay for both meals of him and the (1) person. He thought that he will pay for her as well so he didn’t have any problems with it.

When the cashier served the dishes to our table, she brought two bowls of duck noodles and one plate of rice noodles for 2 of my friends, and it is exactly what shows in the orders: 2 duck noodles and 1 rice noodles (because they paid for 3). But another waitress came and said there is only one duck noodles bowl left for them and another bowl is for another table. So she took it.

My friends did not know that the waitress tricked them until one day they discussed about who pay for whom on that day. So they went through the transactions and found out it is exactly what it is. So disappointed that place, never recommend to...