Restaurant Plein — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

Set menus are a chefs dream. They can focus on sourcing sublime ingredients and play with them with all their fave flavour profiles. "Ingredient driven" is what you'll often hear. With this upside, there are risks. You have to nail each of the 4 dishes. Not just ok or good...nailed. The tomato first course is close to a disaster. Tomatoes for this dish are tough to find. I hope that the chef realised he simply didn't have the raw material to make this very risky dish work. They were as watery and bland as they were floury. From this, we improved, but only as far as "ok." Again, the kolrabi to make this dish work has to be amazing. It needs peppery notes and flavour depth that are hard to find. But for this dish, you have them or pull the dish. The dressing was excellent, but the horseradish needed to play a more overt role. Especially with this kolrabi. The fish pieces barely rate a mention, as they barely rated presence...come on, chef, 80g of your off cuts from the main course, please. Things improved greatly with the fish course. Balance and craft in good measure, with great use of sweet, sour, and acid. The dessert, too, had a good review. The pine cone jam elevated this dish from a pleasant end to something remarkable. Id say the dishes were fussier than great produce driven dishes require. Simple is best when the ingredients are too. There was great bread and butter. Take a risk and offer refills, please. Your portions are small, so at least let us fill on great bread. The glass wines were good and the service the same. The room is stuffy, especially against the wall. It's a good place that can be...

E: Finally enjoyed the à la carte here, and boy does this restaurant need another round of applauds. We ate through the whole menu and everything was excellent. I especially enjoyed the tartar and the patatas bombay. And the natural wines served from around Europe were all spot on. They don't serve many traditional wines, but go for the more modern pet nats etc, but they did have for example champagne. Oh, and of course if you come here have the bread! It doesn't let you down, I promise.

Went for a lunch, definitely one of the best quality lunch options in the area. Modern place and atmosphere. If you are super hungry, you might go somewhere else. But if you want quality, this is the place for you around these parts. The restaurant it next to a rather busy road, but the entrance and terrace are on more quiet one. So there is some road noice. Sun shines on the terrace after noon, so if you want sun opt for...

I really love this restaurant but sometimes it can be really frustrating. I got refused to eat there many times. This week, 2 times. Either because I have arrived 15m before the kitchen closes (21h) or today, when it opened, at 17h, they claimed they had no food. Sincerely, I find it very rude for a client who normally goes there, even though is an expensive fine dinning. Also I have recommended it to many friends and been there as well with friends. It is unacceptable the way sometimes I get treated there. Very disapointed for the amount of arrongance and lack of...