Satkar Helsinki

Satkar is the biggest of the numerous Nepalese restaurants you will inevitably come across during your visit in Helsinki. Actually the density of them in Finland is the highest in the Western world, and only in the metropolitan area there are around 50 options! So, eating Nepalese food can be easily considered nowadays a very typical thing for Finns to do. I have personally enjoyed it hundreds of times myself as well.

How come you might ask? It’s not an overwhelming amount of Nepalese in Finland, but in the ’90s a few restaurants in Helsinki charmed the locals so much that it eventually started a phenomenon. Satkar was opened in 1998, which was five years after the first place (Himalaya). But they were one of the trailblazers and I still remember me and my colleagues visiting their original place for the plentiful and delicious “lunch at the mountains” regularly for years.

It’s nowadays very difficult so say which one of the Nepalese restaurants would be the best, as the quality is generally very good and all the places are more or less similar in style. So I basically tend to choose the one that’s currently the most conveniently located. But if I’m downtown, Satkar in Kamppi is still always a safe bet for lunch or dinner and definitely worth the money! While there has been widespread staff exploitation in some of the Nepalese restaurants of Finland reported lately, there’s much more to the phenomenon than just foul play. Try it yourself!