Nokka Restaurant, Helsinki

After a surprising and alarming insult by then French President Jacques Chirac who said of the British, back in 2005, that one “can’t trust people who cook as badly as that. After Finland, it’s the country with the worst food,” the Finns remain steadfast and proud of their local cuisine.

Nokka is a popular waterfront restaurant who holds dear the local Finish ingredients and refuses any of the flamboyancy found in French or Spanish food. Below is an excerpt of Laurie Winer’s review of Nokka for the New York Times:

Nokka’s executive chef, Marko Palovaara, saves his biggest surprise for a dish cleverly disguised as humdrum by this menu description: “Clear tomato soup of organic tomatoes from Svarfvars farm.” This soup was a revelation. The cooled broth is clear only for a moment —as it is poured onto a small, egg-shaped scoop of goat cheese ice cream (along with chopped basil, pinenuts, pea purée and chervil), it turns mint green.

As you eat it and the ice cream slowly melts, the soup grows colder and lighter, and the fresh flavors pop all over again in different ways until at the end the dish is refreshingly chilled. You feel as though you have been on a voyage with this soup. You may want to marry it.

Finish the meal with some Finnish sherry, Sakasti 1998, which is pleasantly intense but thinner in texture than Spanish sherry. Helsinki is a small, safe and fragrant city, so you can drink as much as you like and walk back to wherever you’re staying.

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