Giant Hamburger at Harrin Nakki, Helsinki, Finland

This was my second burger with a journalist from Helsingin Sanomat. He's making a story about hamburgers and I was interviewed for the article while tasting several burgers.

Harrin nakki (Harri's Hotdog) is a typical Finnish grill kiosk. A little booth standing in the corner of local park in the middle of Helsinki. Back in the days the architecture varied from trailers to wooden booths but the city of Helsinki standardized the outlook of these kiosks a few years back.

This particular kiosk has gained fame with 'The best grill kiosk in 2005' award by City magazine and also last year as 'The best grill kiosk in Helsinki 2006' by Helsingin Sanomat. It is also famous for being the quick snack stop for The president of Finland, Tarja Halonen. Yes, the Conan O'Brien 'look-a-like' who is running her second and final period as the President of Finland. After her last election win, in 2006, she went to Harrin nakki for a little snack on her way from national TV's official election night to her election party.

Typical grill kiosk food is "hamburgers", hotdogs, fries with sausages/meatballs/kebab meat. I use quotation marks with hamburgers since those usually don't have anything to do with proper hamburgers. Usually the slap of beef is some hyper-frozen-preservative-filled-piece-of-meat-like-substant which you don't care or realize after you have had couple of drinks too much.

In this case the expectation was right. Giant burger turned to be a flat burger. Top and bottom of the bun was grilled to a flat crispy disc between two flat irons. The bun ended up being a cracker which man could use as target disc in trap shooting. The slap of meat in this case was frozen beef patty not the meat-like-substant. It wasn't a giant one but a regular sized 120 gram (4.2oz) patty grilled to perfection which in this case means a very thin, tasteless and dry piece of meat. Oh, and the burger also had one slice of American cheese. At Harrin Nakki you can choose your condiments from lettuce, onions, pickle relish, mustard, ketchup and handful of mayos. I had lettuce, onions, relish and standard mayo. I normally would have taken the mustard but Finnish mustard doesn't fit the burgers like the standard yellow mustard used in the US.

The end result was propably the worst effort under a description of hamburger that I've tasted so far. Between two crackers I was served a dry slap of beef and condiments. On the condiment side I didn't order everything on it. Maybe the ketchup, mustard or garlic might have given some taste and soften the crackers but I'm afraid it wouldn't change my opinion. This was the worst burger ever.

They may have gained their awards and reputation among Helsinki grill kiosks with other food offering, definetly not with burgers. I do NOT recommend this burger to anyone.

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Harrin Nakki
Agricolankatu 11
00530 Helsinki, Finland


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Heavy-Mega Burger at Hölmölä Burger Grill, Espoo, Finland

Couple of days ago my friend pointed me a little grill kiosk which was supposed to serve excellent burgers. We needed to pick up a piece of countertop from Ikea and this little burger grill was located only one minute drive from Ikea. So after we got our countertop we stopped for burger at Hölmölä Burger Grill. The place looked like a typical Finnish grill kiosk. It also seemed to be a trucker paradise since it's located near a highway crossing and four trucks were parked by the road. In a way that should be good sign.

I parked my car and walked around the corner and joined to a small line of people formed in front of the counter. I soon realized that everything comes out from the freezer so I already knew what I'll be getting. On the menu they have single and double burgers with three patty sizes - 75 grams (2.6oz), 120 grams (4.2oz) and 188 grams (6.6oz) - and in different variations they add cheese (only cheddar), bacon, egg, pineapple slice, bbq sauce. They also serve other Finnish grill kiosk foods like fries with sausages/meatballs/kebab meat/chicken nuggets, hot dogs, Finnish meatpies filled with sausages/eggs/cheese.

I ordered a Heavy-Mega Burger which stands for a Double Cheeseburger with two 120 gram (4.2oz) pattys and two slices of cheese. You can order your burger with lettuce, pickles, onion, ketchup, mustard and your choice of sauce from American sauce (tomato based mayo with pickles and seasoning) or garlic sauce (basic garlic mayo). I took mine with everything on it, except mustard and ketchup, and it became to be a messy mistake. Since all the indoor dining seats were occupied I asked them to wrap my burger to go. So,I got my burger wrapped in tinfoil and took a handfull of napkins and headed to my car. I took my picture and was a bit worried about all the sauces. I took a careful bite and was really lucky to keep all the sauces off from my car seat. After that I decide to step out and finish my burger outside.

If the burger was messy it didn't do a good job as a burger. The freezer pattys had lost their tasty juices during the grilling. The burger was filled with both sauces but no sauce can fix the problem with pattys. I like to have taste from burger and sauces should work as a seasoning, not as main event. The bun was standard grill kiosk buns with seasame seeds and they grilled the buns heavily from the outside which is a mistake. They also piled burger in a weird way. If look the picture you can see that all the cold stuff is between the two pattys which are topped with cheddar slices and bun. This way the bun doesn't get any of the sauces and when it's grilled this heavily it is really dry. Also when you have all the condiments between two pattys it gets messy since nothing gets soaked in and you end up having the stuff on your lap.

In a way I'm starting to lose my hope with Finnish burgers. This was supposed to be a good joint not just another kiosk selling freezer pattys. The burger was big, nothing wrong with that but the taste is only based on their sauces which are just standard grill kiosk sauces. Not the worst burger I've tasted but far away from my top list. Recommended if you grave a huge burgers and do not care about the juicyness. Unfortunately I can't recommend this place for real burger heads.

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Hölmölä Burger Grill
Bemböle, Espoo
+358-9-863-1678
Website


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Big Police Burger at Hampuris, Helsinki, Finland

Hampuris is a small grill kiosk chain in Helsinki which started to reposition their business towards burger chain about a year ago. They started to run ads on TV and also offer home delivery. Unfortunately they still are just another grill kiosk. Their pictures of burgers have fresh lettuce leaves and nice looking burgers but the reality is really something else. And I'm not talking about the standard failure to match the marketing images, this was much worst. Just compare the image above and visit their website for comparison.

The funny thing with this place is that they have named their burgers and combos with names like Big Police and XXL, but they do a really bad job on telling what's in the burger. They don't even do that on their website. When you arrive to their counter for the first time you can't know what you are ordering without asking. So, I started asking while sitting on drive through line and cars started to line up behind me. Finally I decided to order a Big Police Burger combo which basically was a large Double Cheeseburger with fries and soft drink. I got my order in a polystyrene box, and drive off to a parking lot without seeing what's in the box. I parked my car and opened the box and was a bit disappointed since my expectations were closer to their images with fresh ingredients. The burger was build as a triple-decker but they didn't use triple-decker bun. They just had one regular bun and they added a top from another bun to work as a middle piece. The buns were warm but not grilled or toasted, just fluffy warm buns. The slaps of meat were the very same frozen beef patties that I'm complaining in every other Finnish restaurant or grill kiosk which serve burgers. In other words, the beef was tasteless and dry like in any other place using the same ingredient. The burger also had a slice of cheddar, little shredded lettuce, not fresh lettuce leaves as in their pictures, a little tomato slice and some standard red bell pepper mayo. The fries were really soft, greasy and tasteless.

I really hated the place and will not visit them ever again. I suggest that you stay away from this place. Not recommended.

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Hampuris
Lintulahdenkatu 6
00530 Helsinki, Finland
+358-9-739-668
www.hampuris.fi


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Double Cheeseburger at Tuen Grilli, Lappeenranta, Finland

I'm flying to LA tomorrow for couple of meetings. This will be my first trip to LA since I started this blog so be prepared for some serious burger tourism. I kind of started my burger tourism part of the trip already in Finland after dropping my family to parents-in-law who live in South East Finland. On my way back to Helsinki I stopped in Lappeenranta after I had heard stories about a small grill kiosk which serves excellent burgers.

The grill kiosk culture in Finland has long roots and basically the menu is the same in every place with little specials depending in what part of the country you are. The basic menu items are french fries with sausage/meatballs, Finnish meat pies, hot dogs and burgers. Normally burgers have a frozen meat like substance as a patty but when you are drung and grave for vitamin x you don't care or taste anything as long as it's bad for you and is full of grease. Today, a typical grill kiosk has a pure beef burger as a special high price item on their list.

Tuen grilli seems like a typical Finnish grill kiosk. A small building with a stand in front of it. The cool thing is that this place is not located in the corner of the public park in the center of town like these places usually are. Their small 'shed' stands in the middle of residental area across the street to a school close to local hockey stadium. The use only pure beef pattys for their burgers, that's not common. Their pattys come from the freezer but it's still rare for Finnish grill kiosk to only serve pure beef pattys. They serve all standard grill kiosk food from burgers to Finnish meat pies and different variations of fries.

Double Cheeseburger at Tuen Grilli is a triple-decker burger with two meats and two cheddar cheese slices. You can choose your condiments from lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion, american sauce, garlic sauce, mustard and ketchup. The bun is not the standard fluffy burger bun that you normally see in Finnish grills. It's big, fresh and firm enough to hold the burger without crumbling to your hand, and it's nicely grilled from the inside. They actually cut their buns to triple-decker buns themself. As I mentioned earlier, meat was pure beef but unfortunately it came from the freezer and were the standard freezer patty. Whatever it is, it works well. This burger is really tasty, they don't over grill the meat and it as juicy as ready made freezer pattys can be. Burger was piled nicely, it was easy to eat and you didn't get too much condiments. I had everything on it except mustard and ketchup, and even if the sauces are basic supermarket stuff it works when there's not too much of everything. Everything seemed to been fresh, even the tomato slice was sliced in front of my eyes.

This was definetly the best burger I've tasted so far in Finland. With a freshly grounded beef this might been a candidate to my top burger list. Recommended!

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Tuen Grilli
Parkkarilankatu 43
53200 Lappeenranta, Finland
+358-05-415-6002


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