Saturday, December 8, 2007

Blanko, Turku, Finland

Aurakatu 1
Tel. +358-(0)2-2333966, http://www.blanko.net/english.php

Blanco is a mixture of a loungy restaurant and a club. The interiour follows the industrially influenced style that quite many new restaurants in Finland adhere to. Despite of this reduced ambiance, the atmosphere downstairs is cosy and warm, thanks to the old brick arching that spans the room.

The cuisine is a combination of Italian and Asian, with starters such as sweet potato and smoked-cheese soup (5/9€), crostinis (8€) and deep fried tiger prawns. The pasta list features dishes like lemony tagliatelle with crayfish, artichoke pesto, pine nuts and chili (15€), or tagliatelle with chicken, cold smoked bacon and rocket. The asian part includes Korma chicken Thali (15€), red cury chicken, and lemon grass-chili prawns. For main course, Blanko offers dishes like grilled veal liver (18€), lambchops provencale (23€) or blackened salmon.

We visited the place only for lunch, and went for the smoked-cheese soup, the lemony tagliatelle with crayfish, and the “lamb pasta blanko”. While the soup was OK, the lamb pasta was outright excellent, with very tender meat and a nice mix of Mediterranean spices. The tagliatelle were quite spicy and fresh, almost summery. Both pasta dishes were huge, so there was unfortunately no room to try the desserts. Which, leaving the lemon-liquorice brulée aside, did sound quite off-the-shelf, anyway.

From time to time on Fridays and Saturdays, Blanko turns into a club with visiting DJs.

Altogether, Blanko is very much worth a visit, either for a quick bite during lunch or an informal dinner. While you shouldn’t expect too much from the wine list, you won’t have to leave thirsty, either.

Visited: December 2007

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