Restaurants HS tested a luxury brunch that cost 120 euros without drinks – despite the wild price, the brunch is sold out

From the restaurateur counseling and means of coping are being asked during these times. We are like between a plague and cholera.

Chef of Inari Kim Mikkola sign that definition. But he has seized the opportunity and filled the gap where the restaurant is allowed to be open right now. Instead of dinner, weekend brunches have been offered in Inari for January.

The idea has also been to get people activated. January has traditionally been a solid time for restaurants, even without the corona epidemic.

Inari’s brunch, which costs 120 euros, is a handful, but there is still a queue for each table setting at the restaurant’s seven tables.

The right string has been pulled out and the desired whole has been achieved.

Inari was opened in 2018. Its team had learned from Noma in Copenhagen and also from Japan and South Korea on Noma’s wings. At the heart of the style of food was the replacement of luxurious raw materials with ingenuity and meticulous preparation.

The restaurant received a Michelin star in 2020, but Kim Mikkola has not yet been able to fully enjoy it in the midst of the restaurant industry locks.

January the content of the luxury brunch has varied. Now the seven-course meal consisted largely of exotic influences typical of Inari. In addition, two traditional brunch dishes were included.

The first pain came from Icelandic salmon, the strips of which had been marinated in combo algae. The algae also seasoned the broth, where the predominant taste was Korean kimchi sauerkraut. Small melon balls enlivened the dose.

A ruminant chicken pork sausage, rumored to be modeled on a northern Thai, was served on top of a heavily spiced carrot-apple-chutney. Miraculously, however, the spiciness settled in and made room for the next dish.

It was the turn of the most fascinating dose. At first it looked like fruit salad. Papaya, curry, but what were the white translucent fruit blocks? Bone marrow! The broth of the bovine tibia had been boiled several times and all that indicated fat was removed from it. Only lightness and yet food was left.

Next, we switched to egg dishes. The yolk ball had been pretending for a good time in soy and mirin broth. Beneath it was a dark-speaking ragout, of wild deer. Slices of steamed egg yolk were still revealed from the ragout.

It was followed by a couple of brunch classics, and goodbye was thrown far away for a long time. Were the conventional egg dishes as a whole at the request of some customer?

The sturdy and warm sandwich, croque Madame, consisted of brioche baked on site, gruyère sauce, smoked ham and fried egg. It had taken the place of a classic portion of Benedictine eggs offered at an earlier brunch.

Another thick and everyday serving was kulibiak in a leafy butter dough crust filled with Icelandic salmon and broken jasmine rice. And again there was an egg, now accompanied by a milky rotten sauce.

The dessert returned to more exotic countries. The blueberry coffee bouquet rested on a mascarpone base flavored with green tea, beneath which rose the flavors of umeshu, a bone liqueur. A tasty and elegant portion would have missed the rounding bitterness of a solid meal.

It was brunch price, 120 euros, worth? Judging by the reactions of the protocols was. The atmosphere in the hall, filled with young couples and a couple of families, was calm, and people seemed to enjoy both the service and the food. Everyone drank the champagne from the house, which was offered through the meal for a fee of 100 euros. The acquisition by glass would also have been successful.

The price of brunch is tolerated by the trouble seen in front of the food and the understanding towards the restaurateur. The price of luxuries has also risen in the world. Luxury meals are gaining popularity and the prices are in line with that.

The waiting list had brought extra excitement, and the brunch, which lasted more than three hours, was a great way to spend rainy Sundays.

There was still a surprise when booking and paying for the meal in advance. The “service fee,” or tip, 20 percent, slipped into the price like a stealth. The tip is determined by the level of the American reservation system used by Inari, but the service money could reportedly have not been paid.

Luxury brunch seems to be Kim Mikkola’s other extreme in the price swing of these trying times. That other end is Vitonen’s chicken burgers, which he sells first by car along the country and then at a stone-footed restaurant on Mannerheimintie and a barbecue kiosk in Karhupuisto. Pick-up lunches have also been a thriving business.

The current restriction time would seem to provide a place for old-fashioned lunches. It seems that at least some of the visitors to the restaurants have learned to adjust their time to suit the corona constraints.