Chef & Sommelier. Photo Anna Kiuru.
A restaurant of your own is like a child: it takes lots of love and care, say Chef & Sommerlier’s SASU LAUKKONEN and JOHAN BORGAR.
The restaurant door is open. The smell of coffee urges you to step in and sit down. Sommelier Johan Borgar brings some mocha and cookies to the table, and before long, chef Sasu Laukkonen joins us.
There are no tablecloths, but HANNA KORVELA has designed woven tablets to silence the clatter of dishware. The cutlery is nonchalantly displayed in a wooden box. The word du jour seems to be casual – and organic.
Chef & Sommelier set up shop last October after Borgar and Laukkonen noticed that there were no organic fine dining restaurants in all of Finland. The restaurant is located in the same premises in Eira that Chez Dominique started out from, and that later played host to La Petite Maison. Laukkonen and Borgar met while working at the latter, and soon the idea of every chef’s dream, a restaurant of their own, was born.
Chef & Sommelier. Kuva Anna Kiuru.
”The premises and their location are the most important things for a restaurant, and this place was on the top of our wish list. We’re very happy,” Borgar says.
Between bistro and fine dining
After the fine dining wave at the start of the new millennium, many bistros arrived to soften the restaurant field. Chef & Sommelier tries to walk the line between these two ideologies.
”We just make food and serve it with wine,” Borgar simplifies.
”Food and wine can’t be too expensive. We want to avoid the image of an over-priced place, and maybe woo some new customers as well. We’ve been getting a lot of couples in their twenties coming in, which says something about the restaurant,” the duo ponders.
Both Laukkonen and Borgar are self-taught. Neither had a great master to create a shadow on their path.
”It’s really liberating to be and to do things when you don’t have to think about who’s best. We can do whatever we want together. That’s much more important than to have a bunch of boys fighting at the playground,” the guys enthuse.
From steak and wine to purely organic
In the restaurant business, days can be long: ”A working day can easily be 14 to 18 hours. The tough thing is that you don’t have much time to cook at home,” laments Laukkonen, who has a one-year-old daughter.
He accidentally drops a glass that shatters with a bang.
”Good luck,” says Borgar. ”No biggie, I’m still up 6–1 this week.”
Chef & Sommelier. Photo Anna Kiuru.
Seating 20, the restaurant has been full on many a night. The night before our interview, there was a loud group of suits in one table, a young couple in love in the next one, and a family of three generations next to them. The rest of the tables seated some foreign collaborators and a farmer.
”It’s awesome when you can take the prejudice of the ’steak and red wine’ type guys and turn it completely around,” Laukkonen recounts.
Ah, prejudice. Organic food is a hot potato that divides people’s opinions. If you wanted to exaggerate, you could say that the old and new generation are in a tug-of-war about the matter.
Chef & Sommelier tries to shy away from the ethics debate, because some customers might not appreciate extraneous argumentation.
”Organic food to us is more about quality,” Laukkonen states.
90% of the food on offer is organic, which makes Chef & Sommelier the most organic restaurant in Finland. The produce is ordered from local and organic farms all over Finland. The meats and roots are Finnish organic produce; the mushrooms, fish and berries come from the wild. Arugula, olives and lemons may be trickier to find. The menu is changed at will as well as seasonally.
”Making organic food is easy, because you don’t have to cover up tastes. Everything tastes pure. However, you have to be able to trust your professional skill and vision – the thing that you want to do and how it’s done.”
The right taste at the right time
Beetroots have been toasting on a bed of sea salt in the oven through the night. Although the beets resemble moon rocks, the insides have transformed: the appearance is gel-like and perspiring, the taste soft and soothing.
Goat cheese from Sodankylä, in the north of Finland, goes together with the beets ridiculously well. Handpicked wood-sorrels bring a fourth dimension to the flavor mix. Simple and cosmic.
Chef & Sommelier aren’t afraid to try out new things. At the same time they use ingredients that other would throw away. Leek leaves burnt to a crisp in the oven not only add to the aesthetic, but also fill your gums with a dark, carcinogenic taste. However, as I noticed, you have to be careful about how much of it you use. For a great snack, you can deep-fry parsnip skins seasoned with unrefined sea salt.
”Delicateness is the key to everything. A Michelin inspector told me that the best thing he had ever tasted was a piece of mango in Japan. If he had eaten it an hour earlier or later, the taste wouldn’t have been perfect. Time is at its best when you can linger in it,” Laukkonen says, visibly moved. He sums up everything into an episode from earlier that morning.
”My little daughter put her winter clothes on voluntarily and said the word ’vetoketju’ (’zipper’) to me for the first time.”
The importance of lingering in the moment. †
Huvilakatu 25, 00150 Helsinki. www.chefetsommelier.fi
Text Juhana Hurula Photos Anna Kiuru
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