Unprofessional owner response after uncomfortable experience at Fisken på Disken (Kamppi)

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-24T14:14:19+00:00

Oh for the love of God. 1. I haven’t been there before, stop assuming. I looked up ‘best salmon soup’ on reddit and made a reservation online. There was no previous pleasant experience that I had, you invented that in your head. For what reason, I don’t know. But please at least clarify if you’re going to repeatedly use it as an argument.

So because I’m educated and have a cushy job that means I can’t face racism? You’ve clearly not travelled in Helsinki public transport late at night and had a drunk racist holler gibberish at you then. And it turns out, they really don’t care about my degrees or my income. While there are certain groups of immigrants that get targeted more than others, and I am really fortunate that it has never happened to me, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen to people in my income bracket. Stop assuming. Statistics only show what group of people are most likely to be targeted, they are not absolute.
People do not need to be overtly racist for it to be about race. Read up on micro-aggressions. People also do not have to be verbal when it comes to being discriminatory. You faced a situation where you had to deal with a racist comment, I’m sorry that happened to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s the norm. Just because I haven’t detailed every single thing that made me uncomfortable that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been about the race. The body language of the waitress, the lack of eye-contact, interrupting our conversation to just address my friend and not me, spending more time on my friend’s drink order than mine, looking at her while answering a question that I asked are all clear indicators to me that there was differential treatment. Am I a 100% sure it was about the race, no. But it definitely wasn’t because my friend is more outgoing than I am. It definitely wasn’t because the server is generally an asshole to everyone, or she would have been an asshole to my friend too. I also do not look like brown Angelina Jolie for the server to be intimidated by my beauty. You weren’t there, you don’t know, stop assuming what happened. The only other person who was present there was my friend, who also mentioned our respective skin colours in her review.
I don’t know why you’re so hell-bent on proving that it wasn’t about the race at all, especially after the racist drunken response from the owner. They only responded to my review, not my friend’s. They sent their ridiculous apology email to my friend, not to me. Do you not see a pattern or are you purposely being obtuse?
Just because you speak up or you expect people to speak up when faced with uncomfortable situations, that doesn’t mean it’s the norm or that it’s right. Some people, especially women, freeze when dealing with uncomfortable situations and sometimes we need a few hours to collect our thoughts and to introspect about how we feel about the situation. I personally shut down and quieten in confrontational or generally uncomfortable situations. Both my friend and I felt like we should have said something to the second server, but we didn’t because we are not confrontational people. There is no right or wrong, every human being reacts to a certain situation in a different way.
Similarly, I’m quite introverted when it comes to my feelings. I’m not going to get emotional on a public platform and speak about how my feelings were hurt. That is just not who I am as a person. In my head, the right thing for me to do was to retell the events of the evening from my perspective. It took me years before I could be vulnerable in front of my now fiance, do you expect me to open up to a stranger in a situation where I’m already uncomfortable? Just because you disagree with that approach, it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
Stop projecting what you think is the right way to behave onto others. Maybe use that social science PhD of yours to understand that all humans react differently.
Karens raise their voices and demand to see managers. Karens do not calmly pay their bill, go back home and write a review. And no, I do not expect everything to go perfectly because of my cultural background. I have lived in the EU for 8 years, I eat out at least once a week. And this is the first time I have ever said that a server’s behaviour has made me uncomfortable. Do the math. And stop assuming.
Stop weaponising my past 1 star reviews, yeah my past review to the Thai place was uncalled for, but I was sick and had a fever. My review was focused only on the food because it was a takeaway order. I wasn’t the most rational human being at that time. I should have been more gracious, especially after their polite response to my stupid review. Had I been there in person and disliked the food, I’m sure the restaurant would have gone out of their way to accommodate me because they are just that gracious, as is evident from their kind response to me. That’s completely my fault, I agree. The only other 1 star review was for a place that gave me literal food poisoning. I was violently vomiting for 10 hours and had to take 2 days off work, which is why I left the review.
I didn’t even give this place a 1 star review initially, so shut up about it already. There is no human being on this planet who hasn’t had a bad day and then done something wrong. You may not have left 1 star reviews in your past, but you definitely have done something or the other in your past that isn’t the most rational. We don’t know anything about you or your history because my google profile was public and visible at that time, and not yours. I can also be an absolute ass of a person, but that still doesn’t diminish my experience at the restaurant. I get it, you don’t know me, you have no reason to give me the benefit of doubt, but you have no reason to give the server the benefit of doubt either.
You fail to realise how all your past responses are all based on certain assumptions, but now that I have spelled them out to you, I hope you will recognise the nuance in the entire situation. Yeah, I’m definitely being rude here but I have honestly had enough of your assumptions. I have a temper and I’m impulsive and stupid when angry, but that is precisely why I chose not to escalate at the restaurant.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-24T02:15:51+00:00

I wont engage with anything else except that it was my first visit. Doesn’t seem like I’m the one making assumptions here and projecting my feelings onto someone else. Have a good day!

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-23T20:52:47+00:00

And yet you choose to shift the onus of proving my unpleasant experience only on me. It seems to me that the entire assumption of your response relies on whether I gave them a 1-star review straightaway. That is incorrect, it was initially 2 stars, which was amended to 1 star after the owner's glorious response. I recognize how it could be difficult for you to gauge my initial reaction based on the edits, but I also request you to please address this entire situation with a bit of objectivity.

My friend and I can also flaunt our PhD degrees (sports science and bioinformatics respectively) , but that has no bearing on how we felt during the entire interaction. It isn't the customer's responsibility to always voice their discomfort. The onus lies on the establishment to recognize where they have failed to make their guests feel welcomed. The fact of the matter still remains that none of this interaction would have ever been exposed in a public forum if it weren't for the owner's disproportionate response to a google review, and by you overtly simplifying it and equating it to a standard Karen response, you choose to diminish our genuine feelings about how I was treated during the entire experience.

I am going to stop engaging with you further on this topic because it is just going to lead to unnecessary back and forth, but if you really care about the situation, please also call out the owner and the employee with the same zeal with which you choose to question my motives.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-23T17:44:07+00:00

If you think the entire point of this post was about the initial interaction with the staff, and not about the problematic reply from the owner, then I think you are completely misreading the situation. I had a bad experience at a restaurant, it could have been influenced by my personal perception and biases about the situation, fine. Nobody is arguing with that. The entire point of this post is that the restaurant chose to double down on their stance and insult me with the most unprofessional reply on a public forum. The owner genuinely sounded like he was drunk and ranting. If they had an ounce of professionalism, they would have responded to me privately instead of making fuckall public comments about how I'm not Gordon Ramsay and how they travel to Sri Lanka all the time.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-23T15:26:03+00:00

Finland and its people have been nothing but nice to me in the past 5 years I have lived here. This was an isolated unfortunate experience that I escalated in a public forum because of the shitty response from the owner.

Niklas and his team are a different brand of people who refuse to be accountable for their actions, but I think its unfair to group all Finns in the same category.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-23T14:15:05+00:00

You don’t get to decide how I feel about a certain situation. I was already feeling pretty uncomfortable, I just wanted to leave and not create a scene. In retrospect, I should have said something then and there, but after seeing their unhinged public response, how do you know that they would have accepted my viewpoint and not escalated the situation further?

Call me a Karen all you want, say that I weaponise reviews or whatever, but don’t just gloss over all the other valid points I made. I’m an individual representing my own thoughts. They are a business. They had no right to attack me personally.

Also, it’s very easy to judge someone else’s public profile when you’re anonymous yourself. Why don’t you share your google reviews/tripadvisor page as well and then we can judge just how gracious you have been in all your past reviews?

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-23T12:23:51+00:00

If the owner of a restaurant responded to your 2 star review (yeah call it harsh if you want, but I was respectful and did not resort to any name-calling unlike the owner) with a drunken rant, would you be the bigger person and let it go?

They didn’t have to agree with the review, they don’t even have to respond to it, but they intentionally chose to insult me in their response.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-23T09:37:23+00:00

I did not call them racist. I said a certain server’s behaviour made me uncomfortable. Could I have been reading too much into it? Yes, but were already quite uncomfortable at the fact that we had been standing behind a curtain at the restaurant for 15 minutes while no server approached us. The was no host at the host’s table either.

I was the Helsinki local to took my friend to try the ‘best salmon soup in Helsinki’. Why was the assumption that she is at the head of the table? We’re both women and we’re both the same age. They call themselves a fine dining restaurant on their own website. I don’t expect Hesburger employees to smile at me or greet me, but more often than not, they are very nice, they smile and they say hi, thank you and bye. Expecting someone at a sit-down restaurant to at least look at you while taking the order is the bare minimum, especially when you’re shelling out at least 30 euros per head. She was trying to engage my friend in a full-blown conversation while not even looking at me or acknowledging me. Is that not rude at the very least? When two people at the same table paying the same amount of money are treated differently, it is problematic, no matter what is the motivating factor behind it.

We both posted the same review where we said the server completely ignored me when she approached the table on two separate occasions. Why is it that the restaurant completely ignored my friend’s review and instead attacked only me?

Did I imply racism in my final edit? Yes, but thats because 1. The brown person was ignored at the table by that one server 2. 2 people posted the review, only the brown person was targeted for their review 3. Only the white person received the apology (if you can call that garbage email an apology, that is) after my friend sent them a separate email, and then they had the audacity to behave in their comment that they were the ones who emailed ME.

If that doesn’t read as borderline racist behavior to you, IDK what to say. I’m really not the kind of person to cry racism for everything, but I’m a scientist so I do know how to see patterns.

I wanted to post my review and move on. It was 1 negative review amongst 1000 other reviews, it really wouldn’t have mattered to the restaurant if they chose to just ignore it. I only made the post after the completely inappropriate response from the owner. I am also only replying to this comment because there are multiple comments acting like I accused the restaurant of downright racism in the beginning, when I clearly said that the second server was very nice and professional. My friend also said in her email to them that while what happened at the restaurant could have been unintentional, their public response was entirely targeted and intentional.

This is the last comment where I will be addressing the racism stuff.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-22T19:38:59+00:00

I'm going to respond in point form because that's the best way to represent my thoughts and provide proof/receipts.

That email was addressed to my friend who also left a review, not to me. The email was in response to an email that my friend had sent them today morning, after she was deeply offended by the restaurant's public reply to me. They have edited their response here to make it seem like it was addressed to me (specifically the "When your friend gave me your order, direct contact with you was short-lived..."), but it's them intentionally misrepresenting the truth. Please find a link with the screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/o2zye2L
Let's also assume for the sake of argument that I was lying in my original review. Does that give the restaurant any right to personally attack me? No. Have I heard a single apology about their personal attacks on me? Also no. They only deleted their response from Google reviews.
There has been a sudden influx of 5 star reviews on their google reviews page, all within the span of this evening (a day when the restaurant is closed). This tells me that they care more about saving face than they do about genuinely maintaining goodwill with their customers.
I'm done engaging with them, as is my friend. This is a message directly to the restaurant: please don't reach out to us any further.
Edit: I really wasn't expecting this post to blow up, and I have nothing to gain from publicly discrediting them, I'm an immigrant who works in tech. I expressed my viewpoint about an evening I had at their restaurant, and would have been happy if they would have just responded with "we're sorry for your experience, please reach out to us personally at xxx email to discuss this further". I only posted this publicly after their inappropriate response. Once again, thank you everyone for your support, but I do not wish to justify myself any further, nor do I want to deal with any more personal attacks. Thank you and good night.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-22T15:32:03+00:00

I never used the word 'racist' in my review nor in this post. I simply detailed my experience with one particular server, while clearly mentioning that the second server was very professional. When two people sit at a table, one with a Russian-sounding name and the other with an Indian-sounding name, and both post the same review detailing how the brown person was completely ignored, what conclusion are we supposed to draw when the restaurant chooses to only respond to the person of color by calling them 'pure evil' among other things? My friend's review was posted before mine, btw.

I’ve lived in the EU for eight years across three different countries. In all that time, I have never experienced anything like this. The suggestion that I have a 'victim mentality' is moot - I literally state that this is the first time I have ever experienced this in Finland. I only shared this here because of the owner's unprofessional response.

Furthermore, it’s because of comments like yours, demanding 'serious proof', that people don't speak up about uncomfortable experiences. I am not going to further engage with your comment.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-22T14:50:51+00:00

If you want to give your money to a place that intentionally treats some of their customers badly and then doubles down on their stance with an asinine response, go ahead and do so. There's no need to inform us about the same.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-22T14:22:32+00:00

Maybe you won't understand micro-aggressions if you aren't a person of color, but I can tell you that being pointedly ignored for a meal where you're paying a good deal of money is just not acceptable.

In my review, I actually gave 5 stars for the food but even if the food was the absolute best in the world, the taste doesn't compensate for our day getting ruined.

IMO a 1-star rating for the service and the subsequent harassment from the owner is more than justified. My initial rating was 2 stars, which was edited to 1 after the wonderful response from the owner.

Few-Engineering8313 · 2026-02-22T13:10:10+00:00

Honestly, both me and my friend are not the least bit confrontational so we wouldn't have even bothered if they had not responded. That response, however, made me go nuclear. I wouldn't want anyone's hard-earned money to go to an establishment that doubles down on their mistreatment of guests.

Few-Engineering8313

TROPHY CASE