Review of Töölönranta by choyos

Pricy restaurant in a very nice settlement, often crowded by big groups of both Finns or tourists.

One of those restaurants where food is well-prepared, well-presented, good wine list, but the service side is completely forgotten; slow, unorganized…
I felt completely forgotten, I needed to almost shout to get the attention of a waitress, since all the waiters in the room seem to avoid checking and make eye-contact with customers.

First several delicious starters(listed below in my personal preference order, being the first three must-try):
-Beer marinated beef with garlic mayonnaise (Pure perfection!)
-Finnish goat´s milk Gruyere with currant wine gelé ( the most innovative, great combination and very balance taste)
-Vichyssoise with asparagus (very well done, but…)
-Cured lamb tartar with malt bread
-Peppered and lightly salted salmon with pickled cucumber
-Herring caviar seasoned with sherry, new potatoes

Main dish:
-Grilled whitefish with lemon risotto and crayfish sauce (Although the whitefish and the crafish sauce were finely done and they worked wonderfully together, the lemon risotto spoiled the dish.Risotto was undercooked and hard)

Dessert:
- Lemon Cremè Brûlée (really unbalanced on the taste… it seems the dishes with ölemon do not work well in this restaurant)
However I tried a little bit of my friend’s choice:
-Vanilla soup with poached rhubarb and organic strawberry sorbet (This one was a delicious combination)

Time between starters and main dishes waiting over 30 minutes!!!

One importan point in restaurant business is to end the serving of a table. Once you have started the table, you should be very concentrated on the demands of the table till the full meal ends.
You cannot have more than 5 minutes between one dish and next one, apart from desserts, since they are ordered afterwards. However, many of the desserts are already made and just need to be plated it up, so it should not take that long either.

If problems in the kitchen, customer should be informed to decide if they want to keep on waiting or not…lack of communication is the worse feauture of any customer oriented business.

Summing up:
Pricy: dinner for two + bottle of wine over 120 euros.
Food deserves 4 stars, but service was a complete failure, so only two stars.