Casa Largo is a relatively new Spanish restaurant right in downtown Helsinki. I’d never before found myself there, but after arriving downtown in -20C weather with the goal of finding food, a restaurant conveniently located something like 50 meters from the railway station started to look very tempting indeed..
So in we went. Much to our surprise, the place was fully booked in early Saturday afternoon, which shouldn’t be popular for either lunch or dinner but full it was. Nevertheless, as we promised to get ouf of there in under 90mins, we were allowed in. The interior of the place hadn’t received as much attention as one would’ve hoped – splashes of paint, basic modern wood tables and standard, though comfortable, chairs were laid out traditionally in the restaurant space with no other decoration to speak of. It might’ve been intentional, but I fail to see what kind of atmosphere they were after in the interior design of the place. In any case, at least it didn’t remind me of Spain.
Me being essentially frozen, a complementary (with main course) hot starter soup was welcome news. As predicted, the delicious creamy garlic soup hit the spot perfectly and I started to melt little by little. Going through the menu was a pleasant surprise; a lot of interesting dishes to choose from. Being hungry, we skipped the tapas selection of some 20 tapas and went straight to the main courses. My selection was Pollo Con Salsa de Lima (chicken with lime sauce), which turned out to be pretty good. A well-prepared dish, but somehow the lime sauce lacked something. Maybe there was too much of it, maybe it was too cold or something, but the overall feeling of the food was just “ok”.
Considering the price of the place (the affordable end of the scale with mains between €10-€22), however, the experience was not a bad one. The service was quick and friendly and there would’ve been a few interesting Spanish wines to taste – some of the other dishes may also need to be given a chance to impress, but so far I’d rank this at an average 3 out of 5.
