Your Local Pizza in Tammisaari is not really Your Local Pizza, but it’s one of the best restaurants in Helsinki if it was in Helsinki.
Tammisaari is just 90 km west of Helsinki, a 1 hour car trip along a nice quiet road. My wife and I have spent almost three months here on our island near Tammisaari because of the virus. We have to leave the island to stock up every week or so. However the last three or four days has seen some heavy seas and thunderstorms so we decided to delay our weekly trip, and survive on tinned food, and rhubarb. The latter has been growing fast in the garden. After the weather cleared a little we jumped into our Buster motorboat and pressed on through the high waves with empty stomachs to Tammisaari.
We planned to be there after 4 o’clock in the afternoon so we could try out YLP!, a newest pizza restaurant situated just off the Market Square in the centre of town, or shall we call it the village.
But as I said above this is not your local pizza, but a very good and welcoming place to enjoy a fabulous meal.
The first thing we noticed was that it appeared to be full people were sitting inside and outside along the pavement. I went inside thinking that I’ll probably have to wait 30 to 45 minutes for pizza to arrive because they were just so many people there. But no, the young waitress welcomed me, invited me to sit inside and asked what would I like to order. I asked her how long will I have to wait, and to my great surprise she said they can have it ready in five minutes because all of the customers sitting there had already ordered and were finishing off their pizzas!
The explanation was that they always open at 16:00 hours, and at 5 o’clock there is often plenty of seating room because everyone has eaten and is leaving at the same time…
This must have been the first time in my life that a waitress has welcomed me so warmly into a crowded restaurant an said that the food will be ready in a few minutes!
Ordering a pizza in a place like this is not easy there are some 10 different pizzas all made from local products and each of them looks delicious – I saw some remaining slices when I entered the restaurant.
So I ordered a fresh mushroom pizza which literally arrived within five minutes. We shared one with my wife, and was it delicious! It was so good that we ordered another one to take home with us which we really which we really quickly consumed the next day for lunch but that’s another story.
While we were waiting for the first order, we ordered some drinks, and after discussion with the owner Nick, (the same name as your correspondent) we decided to take a bottle of YLP! cider produced for the restaurant by Tammisaari Brewery/Eknäs Bryggeri. That too was delicious, dry crisp juicy without any hint of sourness. A perfect drink of cider. The restaurant also has other ciders and beers from small local producers…
The pizza crust was also crisp and made of a delicious organic dough that did not become dry, soggy or tasteless cardboard at the end of the meal. It was an exceptional pizza – the herbs, cheese and mushrooms were so good that I can still taste the flavour in my mouth.
We should’ve have tried some of the other pizza combinations. One that stays in our mind is made of locally caught Baltic sprats marinated in a marinade prepared and sold in the local chemist shop in Tammisaari. It appears that the recipe has been used for over 100 years in this particular village and is still a well-kept secret.
As you will see from the webpage of the restaurant the owner, or the Priest, as he likes to be called, has many years of experience in well-known restaurants in different cities around the world, including Helsinki – https://ylp.fi.
He explained to us that all of the ingredients that is that are used in the restaurant are from local producers in Finland – you can see the list of the main ingredients in the picture above. They use dry locally sourced birchwood to heat their pizza oven, which gives a great extra flavour to the pizza.
The restaurant has only been open one year and they already have built up a strong reputation for quality production of excellent pizzas. It’s a perfect addition to spruce up the village of Tammisaari.
