Osteria dei Gusti — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

Food was great. Flavors were what you would expect from a restaurant this caliber. I think the word "authentic" is a joke nowadays and should not be used when reviewing food or restaurants. But if and when this matters to someone i think majority if not all of the staff were italian or at least spoke italian. There were also italian people stopping by constantly during our visit, so i would say this is as close to an "authentic" italian restaurant that you can bump into in Finland. Prices were reasonable considering the quality of cooking, ingredients and the establishment itself.

Service was good. Our waiters were polite but relaxed. Both of them were socially very intelligent. They conversed with us enough to make us feel welcome and comfortable but did not stay too long to make us feel awkward which happens very easily with finnish people. Only thing worth criticising is that when we ordered the bill we had to wait abt 15 minutes for it and it still never came. The restaurant was not full and it was not peak rush hours. It could be that the waiter forgot to bring us our bill. I decided to be proactive myself and went to the cashier to pay. But as one would think this is not propably how they intended the service to be.

The front door was kept open all the time, probably because lack of an AC unit, during our visit. Not a big deal but this allowed two flies and one wasp to enter the restaurant and these creatures were very persistent and made sure that we got the arm exercise we propably needed but didn't want.

Overall our party of 4 were quite happy with everything. We had 3 starters, 4 mains, 4 desserts, 2 mocktails and two cokes and this set us back a bit over 200e. In conclusion, good experience and...

I don't usually do restaurant reviews but this deserves it:

We dined here with a party of seven, all started well with laid back and warm service. Food arrived after a reasonable wait and was a solid 4/5 regardless of a few availability issues but when paying at the end, the owner made us all very uncomfortable by raising his voice and making a number out of what should have been a smooth process.

The owner insisted that we pay for more expensive items on the menu than we ordered after he wrote the check wrong due to an difference between the menu offering and actual availability. The difference had gone completely unannounced by the owner when two of us ordered normal beers but the check had the more expensive "special" beers on it.

After disputing the check total because of this, the owner declined our request to have it corrected and raised his voice, then ranted something we didn't really understand and finally said he "doesn't care if we get mad and don't come back". He also directed his attention almost entirely towards the men in our party and made some sexist remarks throughout our time there.

After the unnecessarily long and awkward payment, the owner proceeded to throw a menu on the floor and stormed to the kitchen. Needless to say that we won't be coming back and I suggest you find another place to dine in if you're looking for smooth service that does not leave you feeling uneasy.

Tl;dr: Food was good but the...

We dined at the restaurant last year after our wedding and today we returned to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. We visited with our 3 month old son. From start to finish the entire dining experience was, once again, perfect.

Pasquale, who was our amazing waiter and front of house, called us the evening before to confirm our baby was welcome at the restaurant and on arrival he did everything to ensure that all 3 of us (and our pram) was accommodated for - from giving us a great table, to ensuring the door was closed so no wind went on the baby and whilst dining he came to see our baby boy and talked about his own family which was lovely. When we left he helped us lift the pram outside. We truly appreciated his generosity and extremely warm welcome.

The food, as always, was amazing. Fresh ingredients and flawless handmade pasta. We ate bruschetta, cold cuts and cheese focaccia platter, carbonara, tortellini and pistachio pannacotta and gelato for dessert. You can taste the love and quality in the food. The restaurant was so thoughtful and even wrote ‘happy anniversary’ on our dessert.

We had a really special celebration and an amazing experience.

The best restaurant in Helsinki. We would...