| Restaurants in Oulu |
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| By Edward Dutton | ||||||
| Tuesday, 07 March 2006 | ||||||
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There are a very large number of restaurants in Oulu to choose from. The city caters for many tastes. Apart from Finnish restaurants, there are Chinese, Indian, Greek and many with an American or Mexican flavour. But which restaurants will provide a great night out and which will make you wish you’d just stayed in with a bottle of wine? Edward Dutton aims to find out . . .
Amarillo – Kirkkokatu 15. **** This chain of restaurants specialises in Mexican and American food. The whole place has a deliberately Mexican, rustic feel with terracotta colours, South American music and Spanish writing all over the place. The kitchen is also open, so that you can occasionally see the flames rush up when the chefs cook steak. The restaurant can get very busy but there is normally no need to book because there are so many tables. The waiting staff are young, friendly and invariably speak English, though the service can be a little slow sometimes for no apparent reason. There is a massive menu including ribs, numerous steaks, hickory chicken and so on and this is also available in English. The portions are sizeable – though they are sometimes stingy on the chips - and the food is very reasonably priced, though the Fajitas are rather expensive. In general, and for what you’re paying, you’re getting good quality food. The only annoying thing is that some ‘offers’ (if you read the small print) are only available to people who have bought a special Amarillo Card. The main thing this restaurant has going for it is a fun atmosphere. It would be great, and affordable, for an office party or a kid’s birthday. 8/10 Pannu – Kauppurienkatu 12. ** This restaurant goes for a kind of French feel, but tries, and fails, to do so in a kind of ‘classy way.’ It is in a cellar or at least underground, the decoration has a Gaulic feel; many of the tables are in romantic, candle-lit booths and the kitchen is in view. The restaurant can be very busy and there is often a need a book. Though the service is otherwise quite good, the way that the waiting staff deal with this busyness is absolutely appalling. Rather than invite potential customers to the bar for a pre-dinner drink and seat, queues of perhaps ten people are simply left to stand in the entrance to the restaurant for up to half an hour with nobody bothering to tell anyone a thing. So booking really is advisable. The food is relatively expensive and, really, not especially enamouring. My garlic bread had so much garlic on it that my wife didn’t want to come anywhere near me for a couple of days. And the steak sauces that they offer – such as goat’s cheese – simply do not work. Though the meal is otherwise very nice, the sauces tend to render it far too rich and, so, unpalatable. It’s probably a good restaurant to take a someone that you want to impress because it seems ‘classy’ without this being reflected in the price. However, in general, the food is not too good and the service, in one respect, can be fairly sloppy. 4/10. Sokeri Jussin Kievari – Pikisaarentie 2 *** The wonderful thing about this restaurant is its location. It is an old wooden building on an Island, surrounded by other old wooden buildings and it over-looks the river. It has a really ‘traditional’ and ‘olde world’ Finnish feel. In the summer, however, it gets very booked-up with people wanting to dine outside on the veranda. The food is, perhaps, slightly bland but this is not so much a criticism of the restaurant but of Finnish food, which is the main thing that it serves. For Finnish food, it is quite good. The meals have a ‘no messing about quality.’ They tend not bother with complex sauces. The portions are also generous and you won’t leave hungry. However, there is a weird, and not entirely successful, eclecticism to the menu. The restaurant, as well as serving reindeer and so on, also serves various steaks and even snails. However, it should be emphasised that the menu is fairly limited, with relatively little choice. The service is of a high standard, the waiting staff are perfectly proficient in English and meals will be received at a reasonable speed. But the best thing is the location. It is a wonderful restaurant to take someone to in the summer, particularly if they want to experience something traditionally Finnish. 6/10 Crecian – Kirkkokatu 55. **** This is a charming and very well-priced Greek restaurant. It is Greek-run and the waiters speak excellent English and Finnish. The interior of the restaurant has a rustic and ‘typically Greek’ feel in almost every way. It is white, of course, there are examples of Greek objet d’art all over the restaurant, photographs of typical Greek life, ‘Ancient Greek’ looking ornaments, Greek music and even pretend grape vines on the ceiling. I didn’t see much plate smashing but maybe that would have been okay if I’d asked. It has a great atmosphere but doesn’t get so busy that you need to book. The flowers are all fake, but that’s a minor gripe. The food is not expensive and, for what you’re paying, it’s good quality – miles better than some Greek restaurants I’ve been to. There is also a reasonable variety on the menu and a particularly large, and not particularly expensive, wine list. The service is absolutely excellent. The waiters are witty and humorous, make you feel at home, are full of recommendations regarding what you should try and so forth. They are also happy for you to be ‘complicated’ by allowing, say, a couple to order two different meals and have half of each. For what you’re paying, this is a superb restaurant which will cheer you up immensely in the dark Finnish winter. 9/10 Little Dragon – Paljatie 4, Joutsensilta. **** (for generosity!) This restaurant looks unappealing. It is in a shopping centre by a main road, it closes at 9pm, the waiters don’t speak English and its ‘Chinese’ decorations are utterly garish. Indeed, the food, by Chinese standards, is not of a particularly high quality. But what it has going for it is the extraordinary generosity of the owners and the fact that if you are not fussy, you like Chinese food, you don’t like spending a lot of money, you don’t mind eating your main meal in the afternoon and you are fantastically greedy . . . then this is Heaven on Earth. On weekday afternoons, Little Dragon has an Eat-as-Much-as-you-like Buffet for €7.50. Not only can you eat as much ‘main course’ food as you like, but also as much salad as you like as starter, as much fruit salad as you like as a dessert, as much soft drink as you like, to wash it all down, as much coffee as you like . . . and on top of all this you get a free ice cream and a free beer . . . and all for €7.50. And as you sit there, stuffed to bursting, you can gaze around the room at some of the peculiar decorations, such as a lit-up picture of the Virgin Mary and a pencil drawing of Jesus (perhaps they are Chinese Catholics). For what you’re paying, and if you’re hungry, this is a great place to go. 8/10 Next Time: Torero, Rosso and many more . . .
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