Restaurant Farouge — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

Here's an honest breakdown of my experience, only intended to help people considering eating here.

Food is extremely overpriced with small portions. We paid 135€ for 2 starters (4 pieces of falafel and a small bowl of hummus), 1 main (a couple pieces of shish tawouk chicken with baked potatoes), 2 desserts (the "olive flavored" icecream and the "date flavored" cake piece) and 3 lemonades, and we left still hungry.

The food completely lacks any and all labanese spices or flavors. Maybe some people like the food, but it is not labanese or authentic by ANY means. Examples: The shish tawouk chicken lacked any sign of salt and pepper to the point of being essentially tasteless, no sign of paprika, tumeric, cumin or any other commonly used middle eastern spices either. Believe me I would know, I am middle eastern and love labanese food. The hummus? Again, no taste. Falafel? Very minimal flavor albeit better than the hummus at least. A positive note: Giving credit where credit is due, the potatoes that accompanied the shish tawouk were very flavorful and lovely.

The drinks are overpriced. The lemonades taste almost exclusively of mint and cost 11€ each.

The service was mediocre/fine for the most part, nothing particularly great or horrible until near the end. Seeing as we had left a piece of the chicken uneaten, the waiter who collected our plates reacted poorly, feigning exasperation and horror at seeing the chicken left jokingly but not asking what/if anything was wrong, then just looked at us judgementally and created a really awkward atmosphere. Somewhat unprofessional.

The place was beautifully decorated, but the music alternated between uncomfortably loud and barely audible which made the whole meal somewhat unpleasant.

The dessserts. Honestly the only part of this that was genuinely infuriating. The "date flavored" cake sounds like a really unique and lovely dessert that I was really looking forward to. It is nice. But it tastes nothing like dates. The "olive oil flavored" icecream with salted caramel sounds very unique and cool to try... except it's just salted caramel icecream with no sign/taste of olive or olive oil. At all.

Last but not least, getting our food took about an hour. Slow service by itself is not the end of the world (especially on busy nights) but accompanied with the other factors it's simply not worth the wait.

Overall not...

So we went with much higher expectations than what we actually experienced there. I ordered chicken skewers. The meat was not tender at all, quite chewy and had no flavour. The potatoes that came with it had no flavour, they were soaked in oil and very soggy. The aioli was good but that was all on my plate that I liked. My partner ordered polpo and it was mediocre too. Portion wise it was small and it was basically potato purée with a piece of octopus. The octopus was well grilled though. The waitress was very nice but upon telling her that the chicken was okay I was told that it is because i am expecting more flavour (clearly because I looked Indian). I have eaten good shish-tawuk and I know that it can be flavourful and tender. Another thing that annoyed us was we were charged for water without even telling us beforehand. In Finland, water is usually free or you are asked if tap water is alright. The water brought to us was not sealed bottled water, so not sure what we were being charged for. Upon asking about the water charge, we were told that if we wanted to make a big deal out of it then they will remove that charge. Overall, a lot of things just felt very pretentious to us. Hopefully, other have had a better...

Me and my friends went there on Saturday night to experience a different atmosphere with food and dancing performance. Well, at our dinner time (8 pm), there was no performance. I ordered Grillattua naudan sisäfilettä vartaassa, spicy fries & aiolia I asked them for no aioli because I hate garlic and they said it would be just on the side! When the food arrived, the aioli had touched part of the beef and the potatoes. I don't call the potatoes fries! They were soft garlicy (not hot) pieces of potato (just see the photoes). The beef was not tasty. Though it was pinkish, surprisingly it was so tough to swallow! My guess is they had used frozen beef. I was hungry. So, I ate the food (not fully!). And, right after, I liked to throw up because of the garlicy taste of the potato. The food cost 35 e (+ 2 e water fee) but the real price should had been 15 e!!!! The service was not great either. They were sort of aggressive and their behavior implied like the worth of costumer is as much as they order. I don't recommend this place.

P.S. My friends said the lamb...