After eating at A21 the night before, the owner told me that very few decent restaurants are open in Helsinki. The only good one he suggested was Gaijin.
Doing a bit of reading, the head chef at Gaijin is famous in Finland for being a (great chef and also) judge on Finland Masterchef. His first restaurant named Farang (which is funny if you know what Farang in Thai and Gaijin in Japanese means) is modern South-East Asian themed whilst Gaijin is modern Japanese (with hints of Korean).
I read through the menu at both and thought Farang sounded better especially as it had one dish "Crispy fried pork with palm sugar caramel" which gave me sad smiles thinking about my much missed crispy fried pork hock at Longrain. A little more research and I discovered Tomi Bjorck actually worked at Longrain Sydney for 2 years! No wonder his menu appealed to me. Sadly Farang is closed on Sundays and so off I went to Gaijin.
Walking into Gaijin reminded me a lot of Longrain. The bar (although smaller) dishing out cocktails, the mood lighting, communal tables with backless chairs, private dining areas for small groups, a mixture of music for a faded but atmospheric background. It felt nice.
Sunday only allows a specific tasting menu. I was lucky that they allowed me to try a pork bun on top of this. The food was washed down with a warm Sakura cocktail (sake, cherry, cranberry, cassia) which was an alcoholic hot cherry drink with a hint of cassia. Excellent for a cold night.
- Green-Shell Mussel (with lemon-vanilla dressing, gari-ginger) - steamed mussel served cold surprisingly with an unusual citrus vanilla dressing;
- Pork Bun (pork belly, kimchi mayonnaise, pickled cucumber) - very thin pork slice with Japanese flavours making it unique and very delicious;
- Salmon Sashimi (with wakame salad, wasabi-yuzu dressing) - a dearth of beautiful quality Norwegian salmon, served with yuzu wakame but couldn't taste wasabi;
- Baby Back Pork Ribs (with soy-mirin caramel, togarashi) - finger-licking good tender pork ribs served on a soy-mirin-based liquid and a palm sugar caramel to spoon over;
- Salt & Pepper Crispy Butterfish (with wok-fried bok choy, radish, dashi) - the butterfish was a bit too oily in being fried and would be better served tempura-style. The dashi stock was a phenomenonal umami with bonito shavings that soaked into the spiced rice;
- Pork Ramen (with pork shin, pork belly, mushrooms, kimchi, soft boiled egg) - very simple stock (and disappointingly small amount of it) with decent meat, a cold egg and strangely out of place kimchi. Mixing the kimchi into the broth made it more interesting but still nothing that I'm used to;
- Sesam Geisha (chocolate cream, sesame-seasalt caramel, sesame ice-cream) - first taste of lovely sesame (not black sesame) ice-cream with a large selection of sweet, salty, crunchy, creamy and powder of variable quality.
Next time I would order the tasting menu for a first visit as the variety is great, and price:quality ratio is excellent especially for Scandinavia. The a la carte seems comparitively expensive if not shared between 3-4, but has good choices such as softshell crab, foie & unagi, miso salmon and miso eggplant. Alternatively eat at Farang.