Comment | I cry for Helsinki when I watch the auction organized by the restaurant

Helsinki The owners of Meicu, a restaurant in Meilahti, announced in mid-November that the world-famous Finnish designer SpongeBob Tynellin (1890–1973) designed restaurant lamps will be auctioned.

The information was widely reported in various media, which is good, because the case is a disaster.

In 2019, the restaurant received the name Meiccu from its new owners. Opened in 1946 at the corner of Pihlajatie and Kuusitie, HOK’s restaurant no. 11 is also known as Restaurant no. 11 and by the nicknames Kuusihokki, Risuhokki and Käpyhokki.

Of the furniture in the restaurant hall, the wall panels and Tynell lamps come from the Hotel Vaakuna in the center of Helsinki, whose site was interrupted by the war.

Restaurant hall is a culturally historically valuable entity. It has remained the same through four different ownership companies. Now an essential part is being detached from the whole, after which it is no longer a whole.

Now, of course, someone thinks that there is some elite student of the university crying behind their chandeliers. That’s what I do, although I wouldn’t guarantee that elitism. I cry for Helsinki, if such a grand expression is allowed. I don’t have anything against fur cap kapaks or Chinese Turkish seals, I’ll be fine in them too if it comes to them.

But these classics are quite rare in Helsinki. When one of these disappears, it’s not just the restaurant that disappears, but a piece of the city’s distinctiveness, if you can say: Stadial identity. Something to appreciate and admire, that we have something like this in this young culture.

They don’t these Elites, Three Crowns and Sea Horses were also originally the places of penguins in top hats and powdered fine hems. Only with the passage of time have they patinated from folk restaurants into crown jewels, into interiors where even the current generation of streetwalkers can experience the historical beauty they deserve at a reasonable price.

Someone may also think that it’s easy to shout from here, when you don’t have a whole lot of your own money tied up in the business. It is true. But not them tunnels I think the current owners of the restaurant would also like to sell. They depend on their livelihood in the restaurant, maybe they have to come forward.

I asked one of the current owners of the restaurant Meicu, whether the Tynells are sold as a whole, or one lamp or a group at a time. He answered that the owners’ first interest is not to destroy the old and historical entity. There are very few buyers who have the potential to buy everything at once.

The price tag of Tynell’s lamps, even in individual pieces, is flying in the clouds. In 2015, the Kinema lamp designed by Tynell for the cinema in Lahti was auctioned for 44,000 euros.

The sale also includes six wall lamps. Picture: Aku Isotalo / HS

Owner when asked, was not at all sure that the auction would be successful. The so-called hammer price has not been set. One almost hopes that if one has to sell, the whole Hela treatment would be sold. That is, the whole restaurant.

If we lived in a fairy tale world, the prince gallant HOK-Elanto, for example, could ride to the spot on his galloping horse. Helsinki’s largest restaurant operator could claim a song from the beginning of its glorious history. Or maybe not anyway, I’d rather have a private person outside of the monopolies.

But even though the world is a wonderful place, we don’t live in a fairy tale, we live in reality. It’s useless to dream here: the bosses of reality are money and consumption. Bosses haven’t been around too much in any restaurant lately.

Restaurant Meiccu, Pihlajatie 34, Mon–Tues 11am–3pm, Wed–Fri 11am–10pm.

Read more: A struggling Helsinki restaurant is selling its high-value designer lamps – The starting price is outrageous