Gastone

An easily located Italian restaurant with warm yet a bit loud atmosphere, good service and tasty food.  Mid-priced, a 4-dish menu & glass of wine ~60€.

Ristorante gastone is located at Kaartinkaupunki, an easily accessible area really close to the center of Helsinki.  From central railwaystation you just have to walk straight forward via Mikonkatu and there it is, next to Dong Bei Hu (I'm pretty sure I'll review this really fine chinese restaurant also at some point).

Walking on an oddly silent Korkeavuorenkatu and in to the restaurant from a bit chilly Helsinki saturday evening it was a small shock to find the restaurant totally booked (we'd reserved a table for two fortunately) and full of just a bit too loud chatter.  A warm welcome and an authentic looking smile from the headwaiter who led us to our table was enough to brush that aside as well as our dislike of crowded places.

We had pretty much decided that we'd get one of the two menus available and eventually we both went for the same menu that consisted of four dishes.  Along with the menus we only took glasses of mellow, yet tense, red wine (Vietti Barbera d´alba tre vigne doc 2013) and that took it's place rather well.

While waiting for the first dish, mildly-flavoured salmon and avocado salad, we were served with warm and tasty focaccia with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Nothing out of ordinary but still really nice.  I'd like to mention our attentive waitress who kept our glasses full and served us more bread when we had gorged the first plate of them.  Seems odd but that kind of service is not found everywhere.
After the nice salmon dish we got organic rigati pasta that sat really well to the whole menu being probably the most italian part of it.
As the main course there was (a rather big serving I might say) bacon-covered deer and some side vegetables.  Really tasty and while it did raise my eyebrow to get "bacon-covered" main course, it didn't fail to deliver.  
Obviously we were full already but there's always room for dessert.  This time it was chocolate cheese cake with some raspberry melba.  Tasty, oh so tasty.
Lastly there were small shots of limoncello as "Chef's greetings" (please someone tell me what's the correct english proverb for that).  Limoncello became familiar to me about ten years ago while visiting Capri in Italy, a place I can easily recommend everyone to visit.  Anacapri at least.  I hadn't forgotten the taste, probably because I bought enough to last couple of years after my visit there.

If I sum up the evening there's very little I can complain about.  The loud environment can easily be forgotten.  The price of dining at Gastone was decent.  Our total bill was about 120€.  Really good service, warm atmosphere and tasty food (although nothing REALLY spectacular).  What else should I demand from a good restaurant visit?

ristorante gastone
www.gastone.fi
Korkeavuorenkatu 45, 00130 Helsinki