94 | Issue 115 | August 2018
Scan Magazine | Restaurant of the Month | Finland
Pure Finnish food
By Ndéla Faye | Photos: Ronja Honko/Kohokohdat
Restaurant of the month, Finland
Driven by an unwavering determination to create a better planet for the next
generation, Restaurant C serves carefully crafted handmade dishes, made from
the purest and freshest Finnish ingredients. From preserving birch leaves to
scouring the woods for roots and herbs to generate interesting flavours, innovation
and ecology is at the core of C’s ethos.
Christina Suominen and co-owner Ilkka
Isotalo launched Restaurant C, located
in the heart of Tampere, in 2008. The
restaurant opened serving handmade
dishes, made from pure, Finnish ingre-
dients. “Then the recession hit. We bare-
ly had any money to buy stock for the
restaurant, and banks would not give us
any credit,” Suominen recalls. “Luckily,
however, small, local producers gave us
ingredients on credit and we were able
to keep afloat. Ever since then, we have
forged close relationships with our lo-
cal suppliers and haven’t looked back.”
Fast-forward ten years, and it is clear
Suominen and Isotalo have formed a
perfectly harmonious co-ownership,
and the restaurant is thriving. Suominen
claims that she is the sensible one of the
two, keeping their feet on the ground,
while Isotalo brings innovation, youth
and flair to the table.Ethical, organic and biodynamic
ingredients
As far as possible, Restaurant C serves
food made from scratch. “Our foods are
carefully crafted, and we value ethical-
ly sourced, organic ingredients, with
special attention paid to biodynamics,”Suominen says. The biodynamic ap-
proach to agriculture was conceived by
Rudolf Steiner and considers a farm as
a closed loop, made up of various or-
ganisms that thrive through biodiversi-
ty, with equal importance granted to the
health of the soil, plants, animals and
humans. “Nothing is brought into the
loop from the outside, and, after cultiva-
tion, the soil is left in a better state than
it was found in,” Suominen explains.
“It’s an all-encompassing philosophy,
and very important to us when sourcing
ingredients. We want to leave the planet
in a better state than we found it, for the
sake of our children.”Storing nature’s bounty
The menu boasts innovative twists on
Nordic dishes, but is largely dictated by
what is available from nearby suppliers.
“Our fish comes from a fisherman at
Lake Pyhäjärvi, for example, so the fish