Helsingin Jalkapallopubi

One star because they have an amazing beer menu and a hipster interior reminiscent of the Mission District in San Francisco or Park Slope in Brooklyn. The staff (the guy behind the bar may have been the owner — sorry for this review, dude!) was nice enough — dryly and slyly humorous and helped me with our pram. Again — I’m sorry, man. I hope you don’t take the rest of this review too personally.
1. My cava. The pour was so deliberately small I wanted to cry because I could tell, as it was being poured into a larger-​than-​usual glass, that this was going in a bad direction.
2. My husband’s pulled beef burger and fries. The concept is awesome and the presentation was rad. If concepts and presentations were the stuff of good eats, they’d get at least 3 stars from me. I digress. The beef was bland. The fries were so awesome LOOKING! Tiny fingerling potatoes all whole and roasted with great seasoning… until that second bite when you realise these fuckers were fried/​roasted in butter. Straight. Butter. This is not the place in this review where butter ceases to be a detractor.
3. My salad. OH NO MY SALAD!!! My beautiful, lovely looking, perfectly cooked salmon salad! I actually cried. I cried because the cook is so amazingly talented with the salmon. The quality is of a caliber not usually found in reasonably priced Helsinki restaurants. But it’s roasted in… BUTTER, so much butter. And the butter-​roasted potatoes come back to haunt this salad. If the greens themselves weren’t drenched in straight oil, and there weren’t generous dollops of mayonnaise covering every square centimeter of prime real estate, I could have let the overzealous chef’s butter slide and enjoyed the balance of buttery and pure, bright greens. Bottom line: this salad will kill you if your palate is so underdeveloped or undiscriminating that you’d eat the whole thing. I would actually order the salad again and ask for the salmon on the side!
4. I know this is a «street food» inspired «pub»…but if you’re going to serve not-​so-​great pub food that gets served in a staggering fashion (my husband’s food came out 10 – 15 minutes before mine), then lower the prices, make the bar to sit at bigger, and remove the «gastro» from «gastropub». Also take some of the focus off of the «dining room» vibe — very cool design, but I can’t imagine a lot of people looking to «dine» at at table will leave happy.
Bottom line: I get what these guys are going for. They have another actual street food outlet that I hear is outstanding. There is hope. I was just horribly disappointed. I really want this place to be awesome. I LIKE this place. I would come back for the beer menu and the old school punk rock sound track in a hot second. I wanted this to be «Our Place»…like the kind of place «Our People» hang at. I wanted to come here like once a week and chill and get to know the people working here and be a regular. I was just so let down.
Pros (and there are some): Beer menu (I do recommend going for that and maybe a side of the potatoes to share), chill space, good music, kinda too cool for school servers and bartenders, and overall vibe are good things. They also didn’t mind the kid’s hipster-​mobile being lugged in. It’s just the kind of place I want more of in Helsinki. But with better food. Oh! I think this place would be a great place for a big casual group just looking for some great beers.