Hanko Sushi

Very delicious, but imo quite expensive for such a small amount of food. I don’t know why sushi in Finland is so expensive.

This is my second sushi experience with this particular Finnish restaurant chain, Hanko Sushi. I use the term «restaurant» loosely because I would classify this more as fast-​food sushi, really. Except for the not so fast part. But wait, let’s start at the beginning.
I’m fairly willing to bet that almost all the customer traffic this particular Hanko sees is from people who don’t have the time or energy to look for something better. Few are probably repeats. I wandered by a little after 12PM on Sunday, which is when they were supposed to open. The girl was just pulling the sliding door back and getting the register started, which I suppose was a clue to how many visitors they actually expected to have. Not a single other customer stopped by the entire time I was there, it should be noted. This was in late July, when the lower shopping level was bustling and most people were back from their midsummer holidays. I also saw a healthy number of tourists milling about. Not many people ventured up that way.
Your basic out-​of-​the-​box sushi bar décor. Lots of wood and minimalist furniture. Signage in black, red and white. Clean but unmemorable. Not a single Asian person in sight, which is usually a warning bell (the place from yesterday is run by people of Asian descent, if I remember right). The girl at the counter (a high school student at her first summer job, it seemed) didn’t seem particularly enthused about having a customer and it took a bit of pointing to explain my order, since she didn’t seem to have the actual names for the nigiri pieces I was asking for memorized. Which were all basic things, since the menu pretty much stuck to the most common ingredients available in bulk in Finland.
My order was unagi (grilled eel), tara (cod), hotate (scallops) and a double of ikura (salmon roe). Considering that the people in the back were probably just unwrapping defrosted pieces of fish and placing them on rice formed in plastic molds (I doubt a place like this has an actual chef in the back), it seemed to take a while.
When it arrived, the food was neatly presented enough, but not particularly exciting. The unagi tasted like the pre-​packaged stuff, soft and overly sauced, without the crispy sweet texture that a freshly grilled piece has. The cod and scallop were similarly mediocre — edible, but not memorable. The salmon roe was a disappointment, since it was composed of the tiny eggs common in Finnish grocery stores, rather than the big fat ones that you get at proper restaurants. I didn’t have much complaint about the rice, since I don’t mind if the sugar/​vinegar balance is a bit towards the sweet side. My tolerance for variation in rice is much higher than for the actual toppings, I guess.
Which leaves the bill. As often happens in these cases, a general feeling of dissatisfaction develops into the certainty that one most certainly did not get what they paid for. The prices were about the same as a typical sushi bar — definitely the same as the one I had been at the day before. And yet, I felt like they were higher, subjectively, since the food was so meh.
Verdict? Go to the Fazer café instead. It’s a few shops down and has tons of tasty baked goods. If you’re really craving sushi, go to Stockmann grocery downstairs and pick up a variety pack of frozen sushi toppings. You’ll get pretty much the same goods for a much better price and no petulant high schoolers looking put-​upon to be behind the cashier.

I read quite a few reviews of Hanko sushi on Unilocal and since most of them were 4 stars I thought to myself that why not give this place a try. I got the small –menu set. First piece of bad news: No cold soft drinks available, apparently the fridge was broken. They only had one fridge and couldn’t store the drinks anywhere, or run to the store and get some ice? Apparently not… Riiiiight.
I first tried the miso soup. First I was thinking to myself that where the h**l is all the tofu and other ‘solid’ material? Maybe in the bottom of the bowl? Took my chopsticks and gave the soup a stir. Did I find any tofu, seaweed etc? Nope! Nothing but a few pieces of chives floating on the top of the soup. Okay, how about the taste, was it any good? Nope! One of the worst soups I have ever tasted. The only thing that I could taste was chives, that’s it.
I thought to myself that the sushi will be better, but how wrong I was. The sushi was like the stuff you get pre-​packaged at a supermarket. The rice had the consistency of porridge. Then there was the unconsistency of the food. For example, there were two pieces of cucumber maki on my plate. The first was soooo bland, but the next one had so much wasabi that it it almost singed my nostrils off.
There is only two good things about this place. The place looks very good and the salmon was of a relatively good quality (not great, but ok). Other than that, I wouldn’t give this place a single star.
All people SHOULD love sushi, but quite often you hear of people who don’t. Now I know that it is because they have went for the pre-​packaged stuff or dined at Hanko Sushi.
What an awful experience. The next time you are walking past a Hanko Sushi and thinking of dining there… don’t. Just run, RUN!!!