While Juuri is not a new restaurant as such, I went there for the first time yesterday for an early dinner.

The food and service were a bit of a mixed bag.

Our waitress started out a bit surly but did warm up a bit once we engaged her a bit in conversation. However, she seemed a bit out of place in a restaurant like this.

The appetizers (called Sapas, which is apparently Juuri's term for Finnish tapas type bites) were quite good. Both of us had three different dishes. My wife's fish dishes were all very good (the miniature kalakukko was especially good). Of my three meat dishes, the smoked reindeer heart was excellent, the sausage quite good (although the vodka mustard overpowered it a bit), and the game vorschmack was quite dry. Overall, we liked 5 of the 6 sapas.

My wife had sirloin of organic lambkin with a puree of smoked celery. The lamb was perfectly cooked but the dish was overly salty and the taste of the lamb was lost in the saltiness and the smokiness.

I had perch en papillote with a potato-fennel gratin with a dill-horseradish sauce. The sauce was very good but the fish was unevenly salted and the en papillote preparation did not work very well with the perch.

We only had local cheeses for dessert and the cheese platter was actually quite good - it seems that Finnish artisanal cheeses are starting to come of age.

We did not survey the wine list very well, as we quickly settled on champagne. The bone dry organic Laherte Frères Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature worked quite well with the food and it was rather well-priced.

The cost of the food for two (three sapas per person, main courses, one cheese platter, and one coffee) was 90 euros, which is not cheap but OK by Helsinki standards.

Overall, we thought Juuri was above average but not quite in the top tier of Helsinki restaurants. The main dishes were a little disappointing, but the inventive appetizers make the place worth a visit.

Cheers,
T.