Archives for “Bars” tag

Ravintola Loiste is the bar and restaurant on top of the Sokos department store and Hotel Vaakuna and is a wonderful place for drinks with a view over the entire city!

You take the lift up to the 10th floor, you don’t have to access through the hotel area, there is a side entrance that takes you directly to the way up.

The view is absolutely stunning. The outside area is quite big, with a terrace that goes around 3 sides of the building so it offers you a beautiful Helsinki panorama in different directions. This is especially recommendable at night when the city is lit up and glowing in the sunset – this view always reminds me of why I love Helsinki so much!

I can tell you one thing: this bar offers two great things that I’ve never seen merged like this anywhere else: they make fantastic cocktails while great music plays – mainly classic rock music from the 80s onwards.

There is a large selection of cocktails that you can browse through on the PC at the counter or try one of their Top 30 cocktails. What I find very interesting, are the twists that they add to make their cocktails unique. They offer all the classics, like a mojito, or some very unconventional ones, like a sea buckthorn margarita. The majority of cocktails won’t sound familiar, but the great bartenders are happy to assist you in your choice or even mix you something off the menu just according what you feel like. I can recommend the “Suffering Bastard” or the “Snickers” cocktail which are spectacular.

The cocktail bar sling in is hidden inside of a mall in the centre, which does not seem like the most attractive location, I have to admit. You enter the building at the passage where it says “Aikapiha” and take the stairs up to the bar – you won’t miss it once you find the entrance. On the other hand it guarantees you that not many walk-in customers make the place too crowded. Sling in Bar is probably one of the most established around, they opened in 1999!

Do you sing in the shower? How about in the restroom? Well, we Finns do, and maybe that’s why karaoke bars are extremely popular here.

One of the more exotic ones is the Karaoke Bar Restroom. It’s an old public lavatory turned into one of the most popular karaoke bars in town. A tiny place between Tehtaankatu and Sepänkatu with oversized and pompous paintings with large gold frames on the wall.

This a place where the suits rub elbows with the local janitors, where the Lady Gagas meet suave older Frank Sinatras. The place hosts lots of bachelor and hen parties and many a celebrity has a habit of visiting The Restroom, one of the best known of them being perhaps Kimi Räikkönen, the Finnish F1 champion with his chums.

Newcomers always get a warm welcome and the atmosphere is very relaxed and supportive. Everybody draws a lot of applause, no matter whether they sing like a nightingale or a crow. And that, my friends, I can tell you from my own experience!

If you want to meet real Finns in their natural habitat you’ll have to see a foreigner about it. Agim Sejdiu, came to Finland from Kosovo some 20 years ago, bought the Merimies pub (Sailor’s Pub) in 2002 and cleaned it from all unsavory elements. However, people do get drunk here, after all, that’s the Finnish way, but everybody is behaving. And if not, Agim will soon sort them out.

The clientèle is mostly in their forties and older, with the occasional youngsters coming to enjoy the good, and cheap, pizzas, or watch a match. The pub has a big TV and a free Wi-Fi. There is also a small “library” where you can bring your own books for others to read, or from where you can borrow a book you like.

The favourite beverages are beer, cider and hard liquor, not many wine drinkers here. This is a place where you can find yourself in the middle of a heated discussion over a surprisingly wide range of topics, from politics to sports or art or almost anything under the sun. The regulars represent a myriad of professions: hair dressers, book keepers, pensioners, psychiatrists, book translators, ad people, nurses, locksmiths, janitors, aspiring poets, musicians…

Don’t let the first impression scare you, people smoking by the door continuing their passionate discussions might look a bit scary, but it’s actually a very nice pub where you can meet very nice people.

Despite the idiotic name (French for ‘eat the south’, which is completely impossible for a Finn to pronounce) and somewhat ‘challenging’ location in the end of Tehtaankatu this is a place well worth visiting. We locals usually skip the “sud” and call it just Mange, pronounced the Finnish way.

Even if the location is a bit challenging, it’s very easy to get here by bus nr 16, which stops right outside their door, or bus nr 14 which stops just around the corner.

The interior is a sight for sore eyes, light and elegant with an open fire on the wall and Frank Sinatra softly singing in the background. The service is very friendly and professional. The food is modern and traditional Mediterranean, with a local twist. One of Mange’s special signature foods is a traditional bouillabaisse with all the proper trimmings. My absolute favorites are their salads, big and tasty with lovely fresh ingredients!

They also have several fixed menu’s, ‘Maison’, ‘Paysan’, ‘Bourgeois’ and also one called ‘Theatre’ as they have a lot of different happenings going on. Sometimes it’s a theatre performance, sometimes a chamber music concert or a wine tasting evening. Check the web page for what’s going on.

You can also just pop in and have a glass of wine and a little snack in their wine corner, all the wines can be bought by the glass.