Tapas BarCelona, Flamingo Center, Vantaa

Well it's located is a shopping mall so it's quite impossible to be very impressive, but the value for money here is quite extraordinary. For 15 euro you can enjoy an all you can eat buffet including good quality spanish sausages, meet and ham, with juicy vegetables, mushrooms, salads, pasta and fruits. Before they also had warm meat dishes but then the price was more than 20euro, making it hard to compete with the near by restaurants. This way its conciderably cheaper but still offering very good quaity - even though not warm - ingredients.

What's quite neat here is the Spanish radio really flavouring up the atmosphere for those who know Spanish or have been influenced by the Spaniard lifestyle. Strangely the 10 flat screens around the bar show Italian Serie A instead of La Liga.

It's a neat restaurant to drop by if you already happened to enter the Flamingo shopping center, otherwise you might want to try the equivalent in the Helsinki center - even though the atmosphere there is very different from this one.

Taking the occasional single tapas here doesn't make much sense, since they are really expensive compared to the buffet - and you can find all of them part of the buffet anyway.

Ravintola Tori, Frederikinkatu

The kitchen being not necessary always Finnish, this still is a very Finnish restaurant with a capital F for sure. The staff, the customers and the surrounding represents some of the best Finnsih dining fashion at the time. The feeling is trendy but far from posh, more appealing to every day streetwalker than a born in Eira eurojack. Its straightforward, a bit loud, and well liked by students and expats.


The menu changes weekly, but the chefs know what they are doing and like to change the list quite often. Even it's not place for the posh, the food is absolutely delicious. My favourite is the house burger, which is juicy and served with oven cooked potateos. Also the risottos hre are good, just like in Italy or Spain. And don't forget the freshly squeesed beetroot juice, or why not the more common but as good carrot juice.

Restaurant is recently renovated, but hasn't lost it's "traditional Tori" look and feel. Come here to dine, have a coffee or just chill and use the free wifi if you are a nerd like me.

Really some of the best value for money you can get in Helsinki. But don't bring you jealous type girlfriend here since the place is often packed with hot chics who aren't necessarily quiet or shy like the rest of the town...