Santa Claus at Pirate Helsinki
Traditional Finnish Christmas buffet usually includes freshly salted fishes, roes, Christmas ham, casseroles and rosolli (beetroot, pickled cucumber, apple, carrot and whipped cream). Restaurant Pirate Helsinki serves instead of “basic” christmas food many rare delicacy traditional dishes.
Pirate Helsinki served 6th time Christmas buffet in cozy and vivacious athmosphere. This was our second visit in a row. Decision to reserve table was made right after our first visit last year.
Again, one of the most famous Finnish chef’s Markus Maulavirta, was helping in the kitchen.
Menu is unfortunately only in Finnish but it includes for instance herrings, roes, smoked fishes, game dishes and different type of side dishes. For dessert you can choose Finnish cheeses and sweet desserts.
Only dish served to the table, first on the menu, Mushroom-truffle soup, was delicious.
All other foods and dishes were on the buffet tables. Because of the wide selection of dishes available, I am not going to bore you by writing detailed description and review of each piece of food tasted. Instead, picture is worth of thousand words.
Buffets can be insidious, you can eat too much and you notice it only after you have finished dinner. But if you decide just to taste small pieces of each food, then you can survive.
Pirate manages well in serving Christmas buffet dinner. In the summer time going is more simple but as relaxed.
One + more for the overall grade, if wine list would have been as luxorious as buffet. Three white and red wines do not necessarily pair with all available savory foods. We had for white wine Petit Chablis, which is enough “neutral” for most of the dishes. Of course beer would be one option as it is quite common drink with christmas time.
See you next year again!
REVIEW: FOOD 4,5/5 – SERVICE 4+/5 – OVERALL GRADE 4+/5
