Ravintola Nolla — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

Highly overrated, mediocre, without any interesting harmony of tastes, for 100 euro / 2 person dinner. I am highly disappointed in this place, and do not recommend it. Beer: First they claim to be a brewery, and have 3 kinds of beers: lager, ipa, and amber ale. I tasted 2 of these for 4.5eur/ 2dl and I was quite disappointed, I cant recall any feeling of hmm what an interesting or tasty beer. The words for the beer are: medicare, ordinary, okay. Thats not what you want for 9 euro/ 4dl I think. But alright I guess. A 3,2 euro (5dl) pyynikin mosaic lager, is probably a better beer than what they claim to made. Food: I ordered a tapas, starter, main dish. My date ordered cheff's menu. The starter I had was beer pickled vegetables, which sounded very interesting, but in reality its a couple pieces of carrot and another hard vegetable, that are very difficult to chew, and has a vinegar taste, maybe with a bit of karhu beer taste. The starter was some sort of mushroom based food, which was my favourite of all the foods I had, and was kind good actually, but was still missing something interesting. My main dish was the vegetarian option: beetroot pie with cabbage? and some sort of berry sauce. Now this main dish made me angry. There is absolutely no sense in this food. The pie dough tastes a bit sweet, the beetroot is a bit salty/sour, with a huge amount of burnt tasting filling next to it which is very bitter, and the sauce has a strong sour berry addition. None of the ingredients and tastes supplement each other to create a something new, special, or even good. It creates a feeling of strong mismatch in your mouth and you start to wonder who came up with this idea? Why is it on the menu? Is this something traditional that was always a bad idea? That is my feeling from all the foods both mine and my dates. Ingredients are okay, prepared in a good/okay way, to create small portions of very badly designed foods, that are failures before making them, because the taste fail to match together. I am disappointed and surprised that how this place can be so highly rated, with so bad food. I honestly think a 7 euro chicken burger in mcdonalds gives you a better gourmet experience. Now you can say that this is just what you get for the price, but my date recently been to another fine dining category place, with very similar prices, where the end ill was also around 50 / person, and she was also highly disappointed. The service is nice, the atmosphere is also good, table a bit small. Perhaps we were unlucky, or there was a recent change of kitchen staff. I will not try again. The current rating of 4.7 is outrageous, so I give one start to try to push it closer to reality of the actual rating of...

I had high expectations but was ultimately let down by lack of innovation and what felt like total randomness of the dishes.

We had the tasting menu which consisted of 4 surprise dishes. The first starter was fine, everyone else in the table seemed to like the flavours. I found it OK. It was a mix of different fruits.

Second course could not get more underwhelming. A plate of potatoes in a paprika sauce. I can't believe any restaurant would serve potatoes as a standalone dish? This downgraded the experience for me. Potatoes are know to be a very cheap ingredient and would have expected to get something served with it (other than foam and fish roe, but something with a bit of substance) Everyone agreed the taste was OK but would never pay for it, switch potatoes to something else please. I can see the restaurant keeps rotating the same ingredients with different sauces etc.

The main course was white fish (or beef for those who wanted to pay extra €7). I love white fish and it was well cooked. However, I couldn't not eat the sauce it was paired with. Extremely sickly/creamy, and the pesto served with it did not work for me at all. I just didn't get what they were trying to do here. The courgette could not save this one. One person ordered beef which was cooked rare, and was unfortunately too raw for the person's liking who is used to eating his steak medium rare.

Lastly, I could not even finish the dessert. If I remember right, the ice cream or the toffee was black garlic flavour. Whatever it was, it was extremely bitter and my taste buds could not cooperate with it. I ate the strawberries though.

After the meal everyone felt this experience didn't feel worth the money for us, and it let us down. Wouldn't unfortunately return and that's why I have given 2 stars. Service was friendly, restaurant itself nicely decorated, but full of smoke from the kitchen and...

The Experience. Not just in terms of food and service, which were fantastic, but in terms of mentality. From the starters to the dessert through the wines (this Serbian one, as strange as perfect for the plate, along with this German Riesling “Verde” that was just fantastic), the home-made beers (four different ones), everything was above average. But the conversation with Pedro, one of the three young guys who own and run the restaurant (along with Luka, Serbian, and Albert, Spanish) was just fantastic. His taste in choosing the right wines, the way he’s able to communicate the values of the business, in a very humble way, so Finnish, the passion he transmits, is just a reason to go there. The design and the ambiance are incredible. The tastes are unique, combining local foods with the southern touch (the pil-pil and the majada, so Spanish and so integrated in the local dishes) make Nolla one of the best gastronomic experiences in my life. A question apart is the Zero Waste approach. Nolla means zero in Finnish, and it’s one of this restaurants where there’s no waste at all. There’s no room to explain the experience here - just go and ask, you’ll be completely surprised about how a restaurant can change the packaging of a fish monger or a coffee brewery. Everything comes from local producers, and if there’s anything that should come from abroad, like pepper, in plastic bags or so, they just don’t make any use of it. Incredible sustainable and foodie experience. A place to remember, to visit and to enjoy. 100% guaranteed. Don’t miss and make you a favor...