Café Regatta

Tiny red wooden cottage by the sea, famous for cinnamon buns

A small red wooden cottage on the Sibelius Park shore, north of the centre. The interior holds maybe a dozen people; everyone else sits on logs in the garden, by an outdoor fire pit, with the bay opening in front. The signature is the cinnamon bun — large, sticky, dense — and the coffee comes with a free refill.

In summer the queue can be 20 minutes long. Combine with a walk past the Sibelius Monument. Bring cash; the place is famously old-school.

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A story
Café Regatta is one of the few surviving wooden buildings on the inner Helsinki shore — the 1880s cottage was a fisherman's house. The owner has refused to let the city demolish or expand it, so the queue for the cinnamon buns now snakes along the shore.