I took Toronto’s new direct flight to Helsinki to eat my way around the city | Canada Voices

While chefs have often prioritized sourcing ingredients from their own backyards, restaurants in Helsinki are emphasizing the concept on a whole new level.

I discovered this recently after I hopped on Finnair’s new direct route from Toronto. The long-haul flight landed in Finland’s capital in the mid-afternoon, making it easy to get started eating my way through the city.

I discovered restaurants that proudly place the country’s woodland culture front and centre. Lake fish and forest game, fermented fruits and wild herbs all come together to make the Finnish version of New Nordic cuisine down to earth, driven by nature and connected to the climate as well as the landscape. Many restaurant tasting menus give visitors a best-in-show experience.

Helsinki’s Punavuori and Kallio neighbourhoods are the restaurant-heavy parts of town. Punavuori is best for destination dining, featuring a high concentration of independent, chef-driven ravintolas – that’s Finnish for restaurants. It’s in this area, within walking distance of my hotel in the centre of town, where I sit down for three of the best meals of my trip. The neighbourhood overlaps with the Design District, so cool wine bars and eateries sit adjacent to the fashion boutiques, lighting showrooms and kitchenware shops that also pepper the quaint side streets.

At Ravintola Skord, chefs Anton von Troil and Jon Backman don’t kid around when it comes to ingredient purity: they don’t serve anything that isn’t produced in Finland, with the exception of salt. The daily menu has to be firmly rooted in Finnish terroir. Wild herbs take the place of pepper, we drink only wine made in Finland from local berries (surprisingly terrific) and there’s no coffee to finish. Though this commitment requires discipline, Skord’s four- or six-course menus still manage to be rather eccentric, thanks in part to some rather ornate thrift-store crockery.

A common whitefish crudo sets the humble tone. Moose meat has been braised for hours, while young fireweed shoots that look and taste like asparagus arrive smothered in a rich cream sauce. It’s at Skord that I discover pike perch – which is neither a pike nor a perch. It is milder than the former and bigger than the latter: the best of both worlds. My deer main course is tender and juicy, with not a hint of gaminess. Desserts are sweetened with honey and berries, and dolled up with fruit reductions. I slide my spoon into parsnip ice cream and birch sorbet, then have to shut my eyes for a few seconds to let the rich forest flavour sink in. The woodsiness reminds me of the menu at Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland and Labrador, where local ingredients rule as well.

Nearby, Ravintola Nolla has a zero-waste, circular manifesto – nolla, meaning zero in Finnish. The strong sustainable system, including energy consumption and efficiency practices, is not just a second thought of founding chefs Carlos Henriques, Luka Balac and Albert Franch Sunyer, but the backbone of the operation. Even the waiters’ pale pink shirts are made out of hospital bedsheets.

Every part of the produce, fish or animal at Nolla is used in some way, the surplus elements reimagined into something else, rather than discarded. Vegetable peels are fermented or puréed into sauces. What would usually be fish waste goes into sauces and fillings, and animal trimmings are used for emulsions or gel-based items. And you can’t miss the giant composting bin in the corner of the dining room, the contents returned to suppliers for use as fertilizer. It’s a fridge-like, stainless-steel beauty, nothing at all like your rustic back-garden wooden box.

I’m seated at the chef’s table right in the kitchen watching the show, a few feet away from where the team is plating the dishes – it’s like dinner theatre. I watch the team turn out pike crudo accented with smoked ginger and black walnut ponzu, and a generous helping of deer tartare sits in a pool of hazelnut dressing. Roasted celeriac comes with grilled kelp and goat cheese foam – fancy, yes, but hearty, like something Grandma would serve. Smoked lion’s mane mushrooms and roasted whitetail deer keep the forest vibe moving right along. I almost don’t have room to try the smoked milk and roasted gooseberry ice creams, but somehow I manage surprisingly well.

More ingredient-first dining awaits at Ravintola Jason, where polished, Michelin-level cooking is presented in an unfussy bistro-like setting. Chef Jari Vesivalo (whose childhood nickname was Jason) is former chef of Michelin-starred Restaurant Olo, another Helsinki heavyweight. The set menus and à-la-carte dishes of seasonal vegetables, seafood and game are less conceptual than those at Skord and Nolla, but perhaps more meticulous, the ultra-rich flavours from regional bounty integrated in seriously unique ways. My companions also appreciated Jason’s separate plant-based tasting menu, which makes it easy for vegetarians to order without fussing over substitutions.

The oohs and ahhs at the table start early and don’t abate. Even the bread and butter is almost a religious experience. My six-course experience begins with yellowtail crudo cured with pear, lemongrass and jalapeno. Succulent, thinly sliced beef tongue with a creamy risotto is a silky delight, and roast lamb is enlivened with wild garlic, delicate asparagus and lemon. A rhubarb dessert laced with jasmine tea, honey and cardamom is gone in a flash, our spoons scraping the bowls raw.

Prices for these feasts, at all three spots, total about 85 Euros per person, with drink pairings available as well. The nice thing about each menu is that the portions were never excessive or overwhelming. We could still walk out at the end on our own two feet, without having to be rolled. A quick trip to Helsinki’s top restaurants revealed a refreshingly different approach to localism, sustainability and craftsmanship, right down to the last drop of cloudberry compote.

If you go

Finnair recently began direct flights from Toronto to Helsinki three times a week. The route runs until the end of August. Finnair.com

The writer was a guest of Finnair, which did not review or approve this article. Stories are based on merit; The Globe does not guarantee coverage.