Restaurant Kosmos was founded in 1924 on today's Kalevankatu. This year is its 100th anniversary. The restaurant has developed into a cultural and culinary institution.
It was evening and in the restaurant the commotion of all times. Then the writer Frans Emil Sillanpää stood up at his desk. He clinked his glass with a spoon, let his eyes wander around the hall, and when it had quieted down, he said in a loud voice: “Excuse me, but do you happen to have other Nobelists there?”
Restaurant Kosmos hall in 2005. In the photo, the booths are on the right of the tables in the middle of the hall.
Restaurant Kosmos hall in 1971. The booths are left of the central tables in the picture. The “Wednesday club” is gathered at the long table in the background.
Professor of domestic literature at the University of Helsinki Kai Laitinen (1924–2013) placed the cask in Kosmos. Is it true, that's a side point, after all, the main character is Sillanpää, who himself won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1939.
There are hundreds of stories about the cosmos. There is at least one fact: Kosmos turns one hundred this year. Yrjö Lindfors opened it under the name Kosmos food restaurants in Helsinki on August 6, 1924, on the street then known as Vladimirinkatu. It couldn't have been an alcohol restaurant in the beginning, because there was a prohibition law in force in Finland.
The founder of Kosmos, Yrjö Lindfors, looks at the restaurant hall from behind it and from Oskari Paatela's painting.
Aino Hepolampi (second from the left) in the Kosmos kitchen in 1971. In the photo, Eila Saarinen (left) and the Kosmos chefs are also around the coke oven. Kylmäkkö Hilda-Karoliina Ollikainen (front right) ran away from Kajaani and the horticulture school to Helsinki and Kosmos and worked in a restaurant for the rest of her life.
Lindfors' spouse Aino Hepolampi continued to run the restaurant after her husband died. The family's last name had already been changed to Hepolammi after Lindfors's childhood home lake, Hepolammi located in Lope.
Where from the restaurant got its name? This has been speculated many times, says the representative of the fourth generation, the CEO Kiira Hepolampi.
“The idea was probably cosmopolitanism and orientation towards Europe.”
The other half of the explanation can be found from the professor of European history at the University of Helsinki From Laura Kolbe, who is preparing the history of Kosmos. It also examines restaurant operations in broader contexts, for example with Alko's role in society in mind.
Katri Hepolampi and artist Leonardo da Vilhu in 2005.
After his parents, Kosmos was in charge Katri Hepolampi. Kolbe quotes an interview with “Katri of Kosmos” from the 80th anniversary of Kosmos: “When my father was planning this, I don't know if there was any big plan. The gentlemen sat over strong tea and thought about what to name the child.”
“There was a similar Hotel Cosmopolite in this building. My father probably didn't really know what Cosmos or Kosmos meant. But when it got a little bit more, that Kosmos started to sound good.”
Director Aino Hepolamme's room 1971. According to the picture information of the Helsinki City Museum, the painting on the wall had been removed from the hall because the two people in the painting were banned from entering the restaurant.
Lasse Marttinen's painting has now been returned to the Kosmos hall. The men's line-up includes, among others, the painter Lasse Marttinen himself (right) and Katri Hepolammi's brothers Ylermi Hepolampi (2nd right) and Reima “Matti” Hepolampi (3rd left).
Artist's restaurant the seed was already planted during the period of Aino Hepolamme, who was involved in the arts.
The clientele included an actor and a theater director Emmi Jurkkaactor, recitation artist Ella Eronen and a poet Arvo Turtiainen. Author “Iris Uurto could be resting under the desk in the office,” the editor Maija Alftan wrote In Helsingin Sanomat 1999.
“Restaurant Katri Hepolampi – – remembers that the men could easily drink ten grogs during the lunch hour, return to their workplace and come to continue at five o'clock.”
Another wet season followed in the 1960s, when the poet-writer-translator Pentti Saarikoski and boxer-writer Jorma Ojaharju moved from the then restaurant Hansa across Mannerheimintie to Kosmos and dragged Helsinki's cultural radicals with them. Ojaharju wrote a book about the era, celebrating the key figures My Cosmos (Otava 1982).
Miina Äkkijyrkä's sculpture Bisse Baby, which Valio didn't worry about, because the sculpture has beer cans, and Sinebrychoff because it has beer cans other than Koff's. So Kiira (left) and Irina Hepolampi keep the cow company in the Kosmos window.
Editor of HS Seija Sartti wrote Katri Hepolammen in the obituarythat this was not only an influencer of restaurant culture, but more broadly of all culture: “Kosmos has been a base for visual artists, gallerists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, entertainers, advertising people, journalists and others who do more or less creative work.”
Kosmos has also been a place for students, politicians, businessmen, officials and tourists. The hall's massive booths can accommodate a thick quartet or a skinny sextet, and the booth is sheltered even for intimate negotiations or interviews.
In the cosmos what matters is its authenticity. The interior does not have a dozen trinkets, but paintings, graphics and sculptures by recognized visual artists.
Let me mention the painter Leena Luostarinen (1949–2013) Il Trainglo D'Oro, which he has named differently from the mainstream. Furthermore, when the artist was asked why only one of the characters in the work has eyebrows, Luostarinen exclaimed: “Lord God, I forgot! I do them with a marker.” However, Kosmos wanted to keep the version without eyebrows.
The faience sculpture lying in front of the big mirror in the hall has it too his story. For a reason, someone stole Leijona written with a capital letter during a busy restaurant night in 1989.
In November 1996, Leijona returned from his trip without explanation. Kosmos hostess Katri Hepolampi was delighted: “Yes, it was needed. Customers asked, “Where's Leijona?”
In the painting by painter Leena Luostarinen, located on the wall of the restaurant Kosmos hall, the figure on the left is missing eyebrows.,
The lobby of Kosmos with its coat racks is its own institution. Irina Hepolampi tells how all the conversations in the phone booth in the background of the picture belonged to the women's toilet on the left. In the photo from 1971, Reima Hepolampi, the brother of director Katri Hepolammi, known as “Matti”, is the hall watchman.
From the cosmos has led four generations of Hepolampi. Nowadays, Ravintola Kosmos oy is run by Katri Hepolamme's niece, the chairman of the board Irina Hepolampi and his daughter, CEO Kiira Hepolampi.
Restaurant food is often left aside in memories. The restaurant's papers from the 1920s and 30s were apparently lost in the 1944 rumba, when Kosmos was forcibly leased to German soldiers. “That much is known from the early days that Kosmos was a place for high school students to eat and there was a cheap sandwich table,” Maija Alftan wrote in her Kosmos story.
“In the restaurant, they did as Katri said, but this was open and open-minded: 'She never said no.' We first found out about the news, and then we went crazy with it,” says Irina Hepolampi in Katri Hepolampi's obituary.
Today, Kosmos defines itself as aiming for 'Helsinki cuisine' with Russian, French and Swedish influences in its background. Classics that remain on the list include, for example, blinis, fried herrings and Wienerliike.
Restaurant Kosmos celebrates its 100th anniversary in August. The history written by Laura Kolbe, with the working title 'Kosmos – family and its restaurant in Helsinki 1924–2024', will be published later this year.
Once stolen from Kosmos, the Lion was quietly returned after seven years and in three pieces glued together. Instead, the small-sized board that was stolen from Kosmos was returned as a postal package and intact.
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