Restaurants The owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant bakes burgers at Karhupuisto’s barbecue kiosk – there is now a queue in front of Snägär in all weathers

Queue the counter at the kiosk selling chicken burgers has stretched longer on a Saturday afternoon than across the street to the Way Bakery Cafe. Way’s root bread line has been a coveted and mocked symbol of Kallio’s change.

Is the chicken burger now the new sour root that Kallio’s food scientists are queuing up for?

A restaurateur who has been puffing up the smell of barbecue chicken in Karhupuisto since the beginning of the year Kim Mikkola is one of the most renowned players in Finnish restaurant culture. His Inari restaurant is one of Helsinki’s top fine dining venues.

Mikkola says that in the first days he sold thousands of chicken burgers from the grill. Kotburger, which costs less than five euros, consists of potato rolls, sauces and breadcrumbs made in breadcrumbs.

When the news of Mikkola’s transition to barbecue sticks reached the Facebook group in the Kallio district, many went wild.

“This is the best in Kallio for a long time,” says the manager of the nearby Gastro Cafe Kallio Kare Karhu declared.

Northern Helsinki in suburbs such as Konala, Malmi and Kannelmäki, the road to Mikkola, which grew up, went to restaurant school after primary school. At the age of 16, he baked pizzas in Rosso.

“The basic Helsinki youth of a child in a recession,” he says.

Mikkola experimented with working in buildings as well as radio and music, but the restaurant industry has kept a hip hop music lover.

After Helsinki’s top restaurants, Mikkola traveled to Copenhagen in 2012 – several times to the world’s best restaurant, Noma. There, until 2016, he worked first as an intern, then as a chef, and finally as a shift attendant.

At the end of the six-day work week, Noma’s employees had a Saturday tradition. Two to three employees took turns preparing their own version of the familiar serving as a counterweight to Noma’s experimental food.

“Then we tasted and talked about what kind of thoughts the dose evokes.”

The idea gave birth to the sessions, which Mikkola refines at the Karhupuisto kiosk, for example.

“The idea at Noma was that if you want to make the best hodar in the world, make the best hodar in the world. That’s enough.”

For years to come After that, Mikkola returned to Helsinki and opened Inari in 2018. It quickly rose to the hottest in town among the restaurants.

In Inari, Mikkola and his team conjured up five- and seven-course menus at three table settings. There could have been 90 customers on Saturday nights.

The reactions were twofold. “Either really good or just shit,” he recalls.

Today, Inari has only one table setting and a fifteen-course menu priced at 180 euros. Even without restrictions, Mikkola wants to take in only half of the permitted number of customers in Inari.

“16 people on Saturday night.”

Received by Inari in February 2020 Michelin star exploded in popularity.

“It just got sick. We got some 2000 bookings like this, ”Mikkola says and clicks his fingers.

“The rest of the year was sold out.”

However, with the restaurant closure that soon followed, reservations lapsed. Mikkola had time for ideas hidden in the minds.

Restaurateur developed the Koti by Kim Mikkola food concept and Kotburger, which he started selling from the Red Mountain photography studio’s door – the first hundred burgers ran out in four minutes. The same thing happened the next day.

“The worst performance was half an hour,” the chef recalls the corona spring of 2020.

Mikkola procured a food truck and gassed his Kotkot car around the city. The word spread from chicken burger. Last summer, he offered his creations to Wolt.

“I haven’t seen anything like it,” Mikkola recalls. “The device won’t beep as fast as orders came in.”

He opened a permanent chicken grill in the autumn in Taka-Töölö. Bear Park followed in January.

Mikkola’s relationship with fried chicken stems from an American marriage to an American-Korean who also worked at Noma. Evelyn Kimin with – barbecue chicken has a strong place in American and Korean cultures.

Grilling chicken from Mikkola is so “sick of fun” that it’s hard to stay away from it.

“I often drive to Töölö on a stick at night to press that chicken,” he feels.

The question arises where Mikkola finds energy and time for everything.

“Others have hobbies, black is nice to fry chicken. But at some point it must be said that there is not enough time. ”

Still, he has embarked on a new project again.

He says that he has signed an agreement to run the restaurant operations of the Töölö football stadium. Services like Kotburger will soon be on offer at games and events.

Inari menu costs 180 euros, chicken burger on the grill 4.75 euros. The target price for a burger is two to three euros. It reportedly does not mean deprivation or compromising on quality.

“The best price, the best product, the best salary,” Mikkola lists his goals and says he pays the employees of his grill 15 euros an hour.

Mikkola praises the encounters with barbecues and Kallio’s dense population density, which creates an excellent basis for restaurant operations.

“It’s a thing of the stad to go to the sniper after a bar or just because. And let’s talk. ”

Inari is currently being caught due to water damage. Otherwise, Mikkola would order there every night doing anything; receiving people, pouring champagne, or writing an invoice.

In between, he would cruise between Töölö and Karhupuisto.

“I haven’t been able to bite it because I’m not interested,” says Mikkola about restaurant restrictions.

He has reportedly not laid off any of his nearly 50 employees during the restriction period.

He plans to hire another 50 players for Töölö football arena.

“I am a people from the suburbs. Diggaan about meining, food, people, experiences. ”