Recommended restaurants in Vaasa

After decent amount of time I spent in Vaasa I made myself a list of nice restaurants worth to visit and enjoy food there. All of mentioned places are worth to visit on working day lunch time and offer option for vegetarians, so ePassi lunch voucher system is accepted there too.

TOP places in the area

Hejm is fancy restaurant but during lunch time they have excellent food for standard price. Making table reservation is unavoidable even during regular days.

MarcoPolo is bistro styled pizzeria. Excellent exception from regular mainstream and chain places. Takeaway is cheaper than eat-in option. My definitely must go place in Vaasa.

Urban Bites is unusual Indian food restaurant intensive on seasoning. Easy to park around since it is not directly in the city center.

Price-value

Scandic hotel restaurant is the best place to go eat "traditional Finnish kitchen". Professional service and always visual attractive buffet table are reasons to go there during week to normally priced lunch.

Niyom Thai ravintola located in kaupahalli. Main features: Tasty Asian food but limited number of seats in nice old school shopping hall. The main reason for visit is on Saturdays when there is a buffet lunch for unbeatable price.

Juku is nice sushi and asian "all you can eat" food place in Shopping center Espen. Note for actual sushi experts: I would go for quality to Magokoro.

Saiwo sushi is similar concept of Asian and sushi restaurant "all you can eat" with buffet style and sodas included in the price. This one is definitely less nice compared to Juku but lunch offer ends on 19 o'clock on evening, so you can go for dinner there and pay lunch price.

Cotton club is working class restaurant with the lowest price for meal in the whole Finland. No buffet, no self service but also no table service. Open only for lunches during working week. You can apply there student discount too.

Student food

You can eat in university canteens without student discount and it is still cheap quality lunch. The best is of course when you can apply KELA student benefit to get your meal for around 3.20 €. Non-Finnish ISIC card isn't enough to be eligible for it.

Mathilda is restaurant in the main Vaasan yliopisto building with view to sea. One of the best student food in Finland based on my personal research.

Alere is Novia university canteen to get cheap or the cheapest student meal which means that you can eat lunch starting at 1 €. Quality was always a step behind Mathilda even though companies running the kitchen are changing sometimes.

Summary

This is my selection of the best restaurants to go and try. I collected the knowledge during the year 2021/2022 before the inflation jump and right after the strongest covid19 restrictions so check details for changes before you step in. Finland is not famous for its food culture but here are nice places to try too.