Nude, Helsinki

nude

Food ★★★★★    Ambiance ★★★★★   Service ★★★★✰

Nude presents a contemporary fusion style fine dining bistro in Kasarmikatu 44, Helsinki. The space of the restaurant is very unique, with a warm and cozy atmosphere. 

Fusion cuisine combines elements of different culinary traditions that originate from different countries, regions, or cultures. We started off the dinner with some champagne and chose their surprise 5 course menu with wine pairings. Additionally we ordered an extra main course, and an extra dessert. The flavors we could identify were Finnish mainly, Italian and Thai. It seemed to like the flavors were well studied and experimented. Fusion flavors can be challenging to satisfy the customers but the dishes we had here were very well balanced and had interesting flavors to it.

  

Presentation of the dishes were excellent and appealing. Some of them were even quite interesting. For example, in the above picture, the fish was served on a block of ice.

Sashimi consisted of white fish and salmon. The fillets were super fresh, soft and delicious! The sashimi was to be eaten out of a shell, which was kinda cute!

The sour dough was warm, felt like fresh out of the oven, and was paired with butter and parmesan creme. It was simply delicious. the parmesan creme just had such an unique taste on the fresh sourdough bread.

 

Charcoal grilled cauliflower and white currants had quite a peculiar taste. The white currants gave a sweet flavor and the small seeds in them added to the texture. The cauliflower was very precisely grilled. The sauce was a bit saltier but balanced it out very well with the entire dish.

The grilled pike perch paired with it was delicious. However, we saw that our next table had more servings of pike perch on their table per person and we felt a bit unlucky :P

Duck liver toast and hazelnut was another street bite that is on the menu. The duck liver mousse was so appetizing and the entire toast with topped hazelnuts was scrumptious. My mouth waters as I write this and remember the experience of taking a bite of this. Yummm!

The beef tartar and black garlic was excellent, although we felt the portion was slightly big considering that it is a monotomic dish. 

Finnish venison, grilled celeriac and yellow foot chanterelle. The venison was from the deer. I was a bit skeptical about if the roast was something I would enjoy, but man Oh man, this was delicious! The chanterelles to add on was just perfect!

(Please note that I have not included all the pictures of the dishes we have had, let's simply blame it on the good pairings of the wine :D)

Overall, in my opinion, I think the dishes aced the concept of fusion food. The wine pairings with these dishes was nothing but perfect! The precision of the flavors were to the point. It is so often that the consumer can end up wrongly interpreting the culinary creations when it comes to fusion foods. But the chef's explanations on the dishes definitely added on for us to understand more on the flavors.

The service was very friendly, confident, knowledgeable on the wines and the dishes.However, we had a bit of lows. The sparkling water that was served to us initially was not that bubbly. The wine was not served to us even after the food was served. We had empty glasses on the table and had to ask for it. And yet again for the dessert, we did not have the cutlery and had to wait with the dessert on the table. One of the chef's told us that they had quite a crazy day.We expected a bit more on the service but at the end we did not mind it since the overall experience was just great!

The restaurant mentions that they have one strong principle: no one leaves our place hungry or unhappy. We definitely were not hungry, especially after some more additional dishes and dessert. So for me it was definitely worth the money, and will go again to experience those flavors and have a chill dinner!