tomppa_29

A very enjoyable dining experience. The atmosphere is rather more sophisticated than usual - no beckoning cat sculptures in evidence - and service was attentive. The food was of a generally high quality; a pair excellent dim sum dishes were followed by two well-executed noodle stir fries.

Empire Plaza is deservedly popular. The restaurant itself was already busy at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, so I'd imagine reservations would be needed on Friday and Saturday evenings.

It's certainly one of the best Chinese restaurants in Helsinki, but I do wonder if they could afford to set their sights a little higher; perhaps a little more innovation with the menu, offering some specials, taking advantage of local ingredients, and so on.

Visited on Saturday afternoon and was gestured vaguely towards a vacant table by one of the two waiting staff. We then sat ignored for over 20 minutes, without a menu, a drink or even the used plates from the previous diners being cleared, before deciding to cut our losses and leave.

It's a strong contender to be the best brunch in Helsinki; the price includes rolls, croissants, cheese, meats, fruit, yoghurt, and a couple of hot dishes, as well as an erikoiskahvi. That said, you pay for the privilege; at €18,80, you have to pack a lot of eatin' into your two hours to make it feel good value. Go there hungry.

Good food, nice atmosphere, and just a pleasant stroll away from the city centre. My one complaint from our last visit was that the food came at a rapid, unrelenting pace - had I not lingered over a cup of tea, we could have had three courses in about 45 minutes. This would have been great for lunch, but felt rather rushed for what was a romantic evening dinner.

It's all you would want from a restaurant; great, imaginative food cooked by nice people. It also has to be the most interesting food for 200km in any direction - where else would you find a snail tortilla, or Snickers soup?!

Minor, very minor criticisms: The main room feels a little too spacious, and could do with a couple more tables to make it feel a bit more intimate. Oh, and the main course - pork belly - came with a great heap of chorizo lentils that was perhaps a little over generous. But really, that's splitting hairs.

Good quality modern Finnish/European food at reasonable prices, augmented by the occasional generous buffet spread. Look out for their special menus on flag days - just the ticket after a visit to Hietaniemi.

The service is highly enthusiastic, albeit with widely varying levels of skill. There's a lot of it too; the trainee waiters have occasionally outnumbered customers, which can be a little distracting.

Visited Chez Dominique for their €36 three course lunch menu; sensational value for incredible food and unbelievably good service (though it should be said that a couple of glasses of champagne, followed by an excellent white wine took the bill north of 150€). It's a testament to the quality of the place that the only criticism one could come up with was that they rather overplayed the savoury ice creams - a baltic herring ice cream amuse-bouche was followed by dijon mustard ice cream in the starter. Helsinki's best restaurant in it's class.