Ravintola Bronda — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

We had booked this place because of the popularity, we could only find a gap between 17:30 and 20:00, which should have been plenty of time. The place is very spacious and beautifully decorated. We were served the drinks list and after 15minutes the friendly waitress took our drinks order. 3 out of 4 of the drinks arrived after 45minutes and repeatedly calling a waiter. The last drink arrived after almost an hour. The food menu did not come and after 3times we finally could look at the food menus. We where looking forward to trying the tasting menu, but now being 18:30 and nobody showed to take our food order and running out of time, we decided to stick to a simple entry and mains, which arrived all at once with 45minutes spare to eat, except for one entry, which came after we finished the mains.We had the truffle croquettes, being served in a 15cm dish and vaguely tasted of truffles. For mains, the fish of the day(38eur) consisting of 3 bite sized deep fried pieces of an undefined ‘white fish’ drowning in a watery sauce with far too much lemon. The entire dish was cold, but I was far too hungry to send it back. The(Pouilly Fumé) wine we had ordered came 10minutes after our mains had arrived and we never saw the bottle. We left the table hungry. This place has a lot of potential but the staff is overtasked and the food is well below what they charge for it. None of the website advertised dishes are on the menu apart from the...

I gave Bronda 4-stars, if possible I would have given the overall experience 3.8 or 3.9 stars. There are aspects the restaurant could easily improve upon, which would make it a 4.3 or 4.5 restaurant.

To start, we were a hungry party of five and had Prawn Cocktail (snack), Soft Taco (snack), Pork Bun (snack), Duck Pastrami, Octopus, Tartar, Caesar salad, ribs and Pommes Fondant. The snacks were okay, and so was the duck and caesar salad. The tartar and ribs were the highlight of the meal, both were very well prepared and very tasty, I recommend ordering both if visiting Bronda. The pommes fondant were on the other hand very disappointing, tasted like basic potatoes with no duck fat taste coming through at all. Also, the octopus, was a bit disappointing.

The restaurant has a nice vibe and attentive waiters. Though I would recommend the receptionist to acknowledge customers instead of staring at the computer screen for two minutes before greeting guests. Recommendations for Bronda would be to more be creative with the salad offering, which would complement the heavier dishes nicely. Also, a fine-dining restaurant should not seat parties at broken tables, this was definitely a minus. Overall, the food was very good I would say 4.6 (ignoring the potatoes, which were close 1 star) and when comparing value for money I...

The atmosphere was nice but I was disappointed in a few things.

First up I'd have to mention the music. Although the idea of having a live DJ is nice, having to shout to hear the person sitting next to you is less of that. Finding a balance between a quiet background tune and actual live performances might be hard, but they have Genelecs on every wall so I don't think it would be impossible to do it.

Then the food: first of all the Beef tartare was plain in taste. Nothing gained if nothing gambled. Second the seared Tigerpawns where a little mild for my taste. And as third and the most severe issue wad that the gnocchi were the same you get in a supermarket. As a side note I would also mention that calling a desert Tiramisu made our way is kinda pointless if it in fact doesn't resemble a tiramisu even faintly.

As a positive ish side the Boquerones (Spanish anjovis) were great, but then again, to mess up a canned food you would have to go lengths to manage that.

Now I don't mean to say that the premesis wouldn't be nice, the drinks very well made and the service also extremely good. It's just that eating that 3€ gnocchi with a self made pesto sauce doesn't quite qualify as a 28€ dish, no matter how nice it looks. And therefore the way it made me feel was that I was paying big bucks for a big...