The first time we went to Bistro Popot was 2016, and we have been coming back ever since. Our visit in August 2019 was about our tenth to Popot. Whenever we are in Lahti, we always dine at Popot.
Popot is situated right in the...center of Lahti, on the corner of Vapaudenkatu, and Rautatienkatu. During years 1935 to 2016 this corner store housed a shoe shop, Nikkisen Kenka. Popot shows its appreciation to this long-standing shoe shop with its name (popot is shoes in Finnish), but also with some decoration - do check out the loos downstairs. Popot is the second restaurant by the owners of the restaurant Roux in Lahti that we have also been to. Our clear favourite of the two is definitely Popot.
The interior of Popot is beautiful, even the fabulous floor tiling - we saw the exact same tiles, and tiling in a bistro in Genoa. The atmosphere in Popot is so pleasant that one is not in a hurry to leave Popot too soon. The service in Popot is very good, friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable - do ask the waitresses for wine recommendations.
One of the marvellous things in Popot is that they serve wine by the centiliter, on almost all of the wines they have on the wine menu; for the most expensive wines they do not use Coravin so getting them by the centiliter depends on the overall demand on the day for those wines. You can therefore have a small taster of several wines during your lunch, or dinner. The pricing is based exactly on the fraction of the whole bottle price that you are buying by the centiliter. What a marvellous idea! This is something we have not come across anywhere else in the world.
On our August 2019 dinner we took three courses, a modified salmon tartar - with avocado salsa replaced by just avocados, as we prefer to eat as little garlic as possible - as a starter, seared entrecote of beef - modified for us again, the taragon aioli changed to basil mayonnaise - with portabello mushroom sauce as the main course, and ice cream (from Porvoo) as dessert. The salmon tartar was very good, and very beautifully laid out. The entrecote dish had elements we liked - the look of the dish, again, very nice; the sauce; the veggies - and one we liked less, namely the entrecote of beef itself. That is down to our preference for the less fatty cuts in steaks. We did still get enough of beef out of the dish for a nice balance for the main course. The delicious ice cream gave a very nice finish for the dinner. On wines we took our waitress’ recommendations, William Fevre Petit Chablis for the starter, Amarone della Valpolicella Tedeschi for the beef, and the divine Lustau San Emilio Pedro Ximénez for the ice cream - good matches, and very nice wines indeed.
Overall, our dinner at Popot was a very pleasant and enjoyable one again. We can’t wait to return to Popot.More
