Restaurant Kaarna is a laid-back Finnish restaurant with a Scandinavian twist. The restaurant offers simple food and as speciality beers from microbreweries. Most of the dishes also have beer suggestions. To start with, restaurant recommends to try snapas, a sortiment of tapas made from Finnish ingredients.
Kaarna is located in Forum shopping center in two floors. Street level, there is a small bar, and at the second level there are the dining area and lounge type of bar. There is even small inside terrace by the entrance in the shopping mall.
Ask for window table by Mannerheim street, if you want to follow by-passers and shoppers.
For starters had Green salad and Blini with pike roe.
It looked beautiful, but unfortunately the taste was not. No dressing was added to the salad, or oil offered. This salad is not listed on the menu, but there were not vegan options for starters. Nice of them to improvised, but not a success this time.
As it is blini season, had to try it for starter. Only roe available was pike, usually salmon or white fish roes are served. Blinis were ok, but the amount of roe was ridiculous. Never have I seen that tiny pile of roe. And seldom, if ever, syrup is served with blini. Missing black pepper was the third thing, which went wrong.
Pulled Oat is oat and bean based protein food developed by Gold & Green, new Finnish vegan food producer.
Finnish flat bread is tasteless and dry as it is, so the toppings should be the opposite. In this case, once again, it looked delicious, but there is just one word to describe this dish: Bland.
Taste of chicken was nice, but is was quite dry. Portion included sauce, which tasted mushrooms. Maybe, if there had been some bites of chanterelles, it might have tasted, what it should have been.
Wine, which was so called Loyalty Customer wine, was best part of the dinner. Banrock Station Shiraz 2016 from Australia paired well with slightly spiced food. Quite sweet taste still because wine is really young.
Restaurant Kaarna has perfect location in one of the busiest shoppping centers and by the Mannerheim street. If you want window table, it is recommend to make table reservation in advance because restaurant is busy on weekend evenings.
Because of fully booked tables, had to wait 40 minutes for starters.
Unfortunaly food experience was not at the level we expected but location and window table increased overall grade.
REVIEW: Food 2/5 – Service 3+/5 – Overall grade 3+/5
Reijosfood 
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