Savoy

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

Perched above Helsinki's rooftops on the edge of Esplanadi Park, Savoy has been one of Finland's defining restaurant addresses since it opened in 1937. The space was designed by Alvar and Aino Aalto, and their original vision — clean-lined, functional furniture, quality natural materials, an intimate dining room wrapped on three sides by terraces — still shapes every visit. In the early 2020s the interior was carefully restored in collaboration with Artek, the Helsinki City Museum and the Alvar Aalto Foundation, with designer Ilse Crawford and her studio Studioilse overseeing the renewal. The goal was to recover the atmosphere and details that had been obscured by decades of incremental changes, not to reinvent the room.

The Chef Patron

The kitchen and dining room are led by Helena Puolakka, one of Finland's most respected chefs. Before returning to Finland in spring 2019, she spent more than twenty years abroad, including seven years in three-Michelin-star kitchens — as head chef at La Tante Claire in London and working alongside Pierre Gagnaire at Hotel Balzac in Paris. At Savoy she holds the title Chef Patron, a French designation that signals responsibility for both the kitchen and the overall guest experience.

Puolakka's stated ambition is to reconcile the restaurant's history with the present moment. Savoy has always been a Finnish restaurant with a deeply French kitchen, and traces of a third influence — Russian — enter through the restaurant's historic connection to Marshal Mannerheim. Her approach has moved the cooking toward something more refined, lighter and more personal. One of her first dishes at Savoy became an immediate new classic: a lighter riff on the traditional vorschmack, served as pelméni dumplings in borsch broth.

The Food and Wine

The kitchen's creative process starts with ingredients. Techniques and recipes draw from classical French cooking, while Savoy's Finnish identity comes through in the produce: reindeer, crayfish, wild mushrooms and forest berries are central to the seasonal menu. Alongside contemporary plates, several long-standing classics appear regularly — Mannerheim's pikeperch, fried Baltic herring, vorschmack and crêpes, ideally served with wild strawberries.

During summer, the team grows herbs and flowers in the terrace garden and maintains a rooftop beehive; a project now fifteen years old, run in dialogue between the kitchen and gardener Hans van der Enden. The honey is harvested and jarred each autumn for the year ahead.

The wine list is rooted in European classics but reaches further — top-tier Burgundies sit alongside excellent Oregonian pinot noirs, and small or emerging producers are introduced alongside established names.

Recognised by the White Guide at a very fine level, Savoy carries its eight decades of history lightly — a rare thing in any city.