This post is about the food we enjoyed on our trip, either home made, store bought, or ordered at a restaurant. It was not immediately clear to me what is the best way to organize this post, by themes or chronologically, so I chose the latter.
Below are the salad we bought at Milano Centrale railway station to be enjoyed on the train to Bergamo: on the left, the salad Niçoise, and on the right a chicken salad. Not bad at all from a railway station superette.
In Bergamo we once again ended up in a poke bowl place for lunch, this time a Milanese chain Poke House. Tomi had a Hot & Spicy bowl with Salmon, and Tei a Teriyaki Chicken bowl (I know the photo is oriented the wrong way, but posting it as a portrait would have taken too much space.)
We stayed the first night in Helsinki at an airport hotel, since our flight arrived very late, and naturally enjoyed the hotel breakfast the next morning. Scandia’s breakfast buffet was awesome, versatile and of good quality, well worth the price. We were happy to learn that they kept track of the amount of food waste per guest. There has been a lot of discussion recently that at breakfast, but also lunch buffets customers tend to hoard way more food that they ever intend to eat. Sadly, also at Scandia we saw a table left behind by guests with plates full of food, hardly touched at all.
On our second morning in Helsinki we continued the tradition of having breakfast with friends in a new place we have never visited before. We found that there were several relatively new coffee roasteries/cafeterias in the area where we stayed, and had a hard time choosing one. We decided to meet our friends at Meli Café & Bakery in Hernesaari, but found it “closed” so we moved on to nearby 18Grams coffee roastery. They did not have a separate breakfast menu, so all four of us chose items from the regular list: an avocado toast, granola, and a special coffee.
For lunch that day we chose a Vietnamese Hanoi Quan — thick noodles, bold flavor (sic!) — at Kamppi shopping mall, as we usually prefer to have Asian food when traveling outside of France, since it is hard to find there, at least anything good. Tomi chose a Phở soup and Tei a dry noodle dish, and we were not disappointed.
After lunch we visited the nearby French style café Enchanté for huge mugs of Café au Lait. The place appeared to be rather new, and not very professionally managed, but the atmosphere was nice and relaxed, once we moved to the back of the café, farthest possible away from the table that liked to have the whole place follow their conversation.
For the breakfast place next morning we chose Café Amore just around the corner from our apartment in Munkkisaari. Tei had a ham and cheese quiche with salad, and Tomi hot oats and a sandwich, with ham and cheese as well.
Fast forward, we were in Tampere and the market hall that I did not know existed, even if I spent a lot of my childhood Summers in Tampere. The market hall is located inside a quarter and is not clearly visible from the street, if you do not pay attention to the signs. We got all dinner items there, vegetables and fish, but I don’t remember exactly what.
For the next breakfast we chose the restaurant Green Hippo: Tomi had a porridge combo with apple juice, and Tei scrambled eggs with ham, and a smoothie. After queuing for the wrist band exchange for the evening’s concert in vain for 30 minutes, we were hungry again. We chose the restaurant Hanko Aasia for lunch: Kimchi pork for Tomi and Hanko poke bowl with grilled salmon for Tei. Delicious!
Finally, we were in Mänttä, the art town. As soon as we got settled in our Airbnb apartment we went to have lunch at the neighboring Café Wilhelmiina, colloquially known as Wilis. I was hoping to get the nice salad I had there last year, but they did not have any, so we had bacon-and-chanterelle pies with salad. Not nearly as good.
We were happy to find the bakery Diivas Juurileipä that opened last year still in business, and offering their delicious lunches. We had Diivas Halloumi and Diivas Eggplant. For dessert we had By Maitola’s nettle ice-cream.
The last meals in Mänttä we had at Café Alex while waiting for the taxi to pick us up and take to the Vilppula railway station: a farmer’s (or peasant’s) salad with meatballs, bacon, red onions, and tomato, and baked potato with chicken and halloumi. Not the pretties or the most delicious (or healthiest) dishes but they kept us satiated until we reached Kangaslampi several hours later.
And finally some dishes we bought or prepared while staying in Tomi’s parents’ house in Kangaslampi: prawn sandwich for lunch and ground liver patty with mashed potatoes for dinner from the supermarket, pike-perch with chanterelles and pike-perch with bacon for dinners — the fish and the mushrooms were brought to us by Tomi’s father. He picked the mushrooms but did not catch the fish himself, but had a neighbor deliver them fresh fish almost daily, all of which the parents could not consume by themselves.
We spent the final two days in Helsinki in Kalasatama, in a highrise above the shopping mall Redi. Our final meal experience was at a Chinese restaurant Noodle Master in the mall. Tomi chose medium-spiced Sichuan style Dandan noodles with pork, and Tei fried noodles with shrimp. Tomi contemplated for a second whether to have his dish medium hot or very hot, and was happy that he did not choose the hotter version.
