Caminito: best Jäätelö in Finland

Kouvola has an incredible secret (not the railway station), it is home to the best hand made ice cream in Finland. Ice Cream or as its known locally Jäätelö

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you ...

Caminito

closing time
Kouvola is a bleak and grey Finnish town, perhaps this comes across a little in the image above, but just behind the glass windows of the store front resides an interior of colour and flavour which is a breath of fresh air in the bleak greyness of Kouvola. While Kouvola would be an ideal town for a director like David Lynch to re-shoot a bleak surreal movie such as Eraserhead, it is not the sort of place where you'd expect to find rich colours and great tasting ice cream ... but as it happens Kouvola is home to the best ice cream shop in Finland.

Certainly this shop belongs more to a place such as Helsinki, Tampere or Turku.


As soon as you walk in the door you're greeted by an assortment of excellent ice creams of the like you will be hard pressed to find anywhere else in Finland.

As well as taking advantage of local flavors (such as Metsamarijat) you can find exotic and delicious flavours from Mango and Banana through to the (just tried it today) Jasmine flavour.

Yes, Jasmine, just as in the Chinese tea.

Its just great.

Naturally Sergio serves coffee (both Finnish style and Espresso), hot chocolate a selection of Teas and even some home baked breads and pastries (for the genuinely hungry).

Everything is made on site by the owner Sergio (who is not a Finn, but from Argentina). So the interior is decorated in the colours of his home town, with some brightly coloured oil paintings of the region adorning the walls.

upstairs

Downstairs he has his ice cream making factory as well as more tables for patrons and even a playground for the kids.





Naturally even the reserved and stoic Finns enjoy hanging out here during the long summer days, and despite not selling beer or other booze here seems to attract quite a turnout.



Lets face it, its nice to be able to take the kids somewhere away from the typical beer selling Kahvilla (and the people you find there) isn't it...

As you may have noticed on this blog, I don't do advertising; so this isn't an ad. In fact its quite unlikey that anyone reading this blog will even be in Finland, I just thought that it was quite "hauska" to find such a Jewel in this place.

Either way I love it and I hope it continues to do well.

See ya there!

best munkki in Southern Finland

Finns make a sweet bread called Munkki ... more or less its a dough nut without the hole. Basically its yeast as the raising agent cooked in hot oil and then dusted in sugar. Anyway it all comes under the category of "kavileipa" or coffee breads.

Well anyway normally I'm sworn off this as its often just crap (especially by "mister donuts" standards from Japan), oily, sugary and mostly stale. Kinda like the 8 donuts for 99¢ you get in Woolies or Coles in Australia. You imagine they'll be good but its only the really hungry or the really greedy who like them.

So, we went out to pick berries yesterday and on the way we needed to fill up the tank with fuel, as my wife has a thing against Shell (for their environmental tardiness in Finland) we dropped into this little innocuous place just 17 or so Km out of Kouvola (heading towards Lappeenranta). It was a semi-abandoned building which had the look of being recently taken out of abandonment by some small private operator (and the Ritoil sign added to that) with the unexpected sign on the roof saying "BAARI" meaning its a bar.




Petrol sales were by a (typical here in Finland) automat ATM style system so we weren't intending to go in.

There was a sign saying "Kavi - Munki 2€" and my wife point it out ... I said you have the Munki and I'll have the coffee. So in we toddle and find a neat but basically large empty area with the food over in the far side from the door.

The woman behind the counter (clearly the owner) was in her late 50's and noticed we spoke English to each other but some Finnish too (when asking her questions). So when I went to pay for our selection she asked (in English) if we'd like her to speak English Finnish or Swedish.

Stunning really ... as after living in central and eastern Finland I'm simply not used to anyone having a nice service attitude. A grunt with a scowl is more like it (you know, filthy foreigners, probably Russians).

But the Munki looked perfect ... and when grabbing a bit with the metal tongs (common here too) it felt right too.

I said that the Munki looked good and the owner replied that she knows that she makes good Munki, because old guys come back to ask "can I buy some to take away in a bag".

In Fact the munki was so dam good my wife only got half of it and we were tempted to take some with us too.

So, if you're travelling between Lappeenranta and Kouvola, drop into that Ritoil about 17km from Kouvola ... best damn munki in the country.

Ohh ... and the berry picking went well too! We found a place which was dripping with wild rasberrys!