HS Helsinki | Tuuli Tukiainen has been going to the restaurant for 50 years, where he learned the unspoken messages of the acting legend: “At the table, you quickly understood what it was all about”

A worker the butler at restaurant Elite was sophisticated and formal. The way they were at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.

At the time, the butler approached a political science student in his twenties Wind from Tukiai and uttered the words that he can still hear vividly in his mind 50 years later.

“Miss Tukiainen, the artist Palo invites you to her table.”

The butler lifted Tukiainen’s half-drunk beer onto a small tray. Then he directed Tukiainen to the glass cabinet, where the actor Tauno Fire sat together with other prominent cultural figures of the time.

Helsinki Tuuli Tukiainen has been a regular customer of the classic restaurant Elite from Tölö for 50 years. On Thursday in July, he had planned to go to his garden in Munkkiniemi, but since the weather forecast promised rain, we sit by Elite’s white tablecloths.

Tukiainen recalls meeting Palo, known as a gentleman and a charmer, and points to the corner where the glass cabinet was still at that time.

“He was a super cool guy,” says Tukiainen.

“If someone at the table started talking in a nasty tone about someone, Palo got up and went around the restaurant greeting people in a friendly way. The table quickly understood what it was all about. He didn’t want to listen to malicious gossip.”

Tukiainen thinks that Palo invited him to the table, because one of his acquaintances was also sitting in the party. Then Tukiainen sat and ate the cream onion steak that Palo offered him – a dish that later became Palo’s signature dish.

According to the 90-year-old restaurant’s history, the classic dish started one evening, when Palo returned from his performance at the National Theater and asked Elite if it was still possible to get some food. The butler went to ask about the kitchen and came back with happy news: meat would be available, with fried potatoes, plenty of onions and cream sauce.

Today However, Tukainen wants something other than steak from the list. He chooses lamb meatballs and a medium beer.

“Could I have a serving with early potatoes? A little dill on top of them. Maybe a bowl of butter too,” he asks the waiter.

The people and the milieu have made Tukiainen return to Elite year after year. The restaurant has preserved its traditionality through colors and funky style. Art is at the center of the interior design.

“These boards give the feeling that I have come home,” says Tukiainen.

Elite gained the reputation of an artist restaurant early on. In addition to Palo, customers included, for example Mika Waltari, Matti Kurjensaari and Lauri Viita. The residents of Lalluka, the artists’ home next to the restaurant, also found their way to the restaurant.

“It flows here automatically, down the hill”, a filmmaker who lived near Lalluka Heikki Partanen said Elite’s history as well.

Sometimes it got to be a joke in the restaurant. Tukiainen says that even though the restaurant is a restrained and clean place, sometimes even the young people who are aware of it sing there at the top of their lungs workers’ songs in the style of the 1970s.

“It was well tolerated at Elite. Now I haven’t tested the limits for a long time.”

In its early stages, the 90-year-old restaurant Elite was popular with workers and artists. Picture: Anna Valli / HS

Supportive forks meatballs and recalls an incident when he tried to get to another restaurant in Helsinki with his sister in the late 1960s. However, they were turned away from the door, as groups of women were not allowed in restaurants at that time.

“We asked if we should hit two men on the street and then come again. The butler said yes.”

This never happened at Elite, says Tukiainen. According to the history of the restaurant, it was emphasized to the staff there that women must be served well.

However, some of the women preferred to stay at home. So does Tauno Palo’s wife Kirsti Ortola.

According to Elite’s janitor, Orola had often called Elite and asked her husband to come home. Palo relayed the message to his wife through the watchman.

“Master, can you say that I have left. I love my wife, but there are friends here.”

At that time, watchmen had a significant role as a messenger, since there were no telephones at that time. Tukiainen calls the caretaker Jussi, who worked at the restaurant during his student days, the “information office”.

“He was always asked if this and that had been seen and with whom the swing has moved here.”

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Supportive order Irish coffee for dessert.

“The best dessert in the world,” he says.

Restaurant Elite has been the scene of many significant events in Tukiainen’s life. He even met his former spouse there in the 1980s.

Today, Tukiainen still visits Elite regularly. She and her male friend have had a continuous table reservation at the restaurant on holidays for eight years.

In the spring, the restaurant calls and asks if it won’t happen again this year. And then Tukiainen says yes again this year, but with more restrained songs than 50 years ago.

“The use of other restaurants has become less when I have such a good time here.”