Tales Wine Bar

Tales is the walk-in wine bar that Restaurant Teller's owners, Teemu Laurell and Lennart Sukapää, opened next door in January 2026. Avecmedia's readers, mostly hospitality professionals, voted it eighth in Finland's best wine bar 2026. Sommelier Heidi Reis writes the list, focused on European wines from the owners' own imports and small importers, and alcohol-free wines are poured too. More places to drink wine in the city: Helsinki.

Food is prepared in Teller's kitchen and finished in Tales's open kitchen, which the bar counter surrounds. At opening the menu ran from olives, cornichons and boquerones to whitefish crudo, vitello tonnato made with lamb tongue and a brown-butter tiger cake. The house bread is Teller's brioche filled with cream cheese, dipped in a garlic-parsley glaze and baked. Alcohol-free drinks are also sold to take away.

Tales opens Tuesday to Saturday from 16:00. Tuesday to Thursday it closes at 23:00, with the kitchen open to 22:00; Friday and Saturday it stays open to midnight, with the kitchen open to 23:00. No hours are published for Sunday or Monday, so plan a weekday or Saturday evening. Most tables are kept for walk-ins; a table can also be booked online through the bar's site.

Hours: Tuesday–Thursday 16:00–23:00, Friday–Saturday 16:00–00:00; no hours are published for Sunday or Monday. Most of the about 50 seats are for walk-ins; to book, use the link on taleswinebar.fi or call 010 207 3000. At opening a glass of wine cost from €10 to about €20 and alcohol-free wine from €9 a glass; prices may have moved since. Accessibility and the languages served in are not published.

Tales is at Arkadiankatu 14 in Etu-Töölö, on the corner block it shares with Restaurant Teller at Fredrikinkatu 71. It lies about 350 m in a straight line from the Kamppi centre and about 700 m from Helsinki Central railway station. Temppeliaukio Church is about 270 m away, close enough to pair with a visit.

Tales Wine Bar is a wine bar of about 50 seats at Arkadiankatu 14 in Etu-Töölö, Helsinki, opened in January 2026 by the owners of Restaurant Teller next door. The names are a pair: in English a teller is a storyteller, and tales are stories; the house slogan is "a wine bar for great stories". It pours European wines by the glass and alcohol-free wines, with small plates from a menu of 13 dishes at opening.

Teemu Laurell, winner of Top Chef Suomi's second season, which aired from January 2012, opened Teller with Lennart Sukapää in a former bank hall in spring 2024. Teller says KOP Bank and the record shop Äx served within its walls before it; Äx opened its first Helsinki shop on this corner of Fredrikinkatu and Arkadiankatu in spring 2008. Tales took the vacant shop space next door, where a gallery had first been planned.

Sommelier Heidi Reis says she built the list from ecologically and socially sustainable wines, to bring out the makers behind them, and that with the owners' own imports one person may stand between the winemaker and the guest. The owners have set one corner aside for selling all wines to take away, should the law ever allow it. For now only alcohol-free drinks leave with guests. The bar is a stop on a city wine trail.