Lidl plans to open a pop-up restaurant together with Henri Alén.
All the ingredients in Henri Alén’s menu come from the Lidl store. Pete Anikari
Chef Henri Alen and Lidl will open the Lidlerie restaurant at the end of November. It is a pop-up restaurant that operates in the premises of Finnjävel Sal.
Alén accepted the challenge offered by Lidl and designed menus with ingredients from Lidl’s offer. The menus are super cheap. They only cost as much as the raw materials in question cost in the store. The price of the cheapest menu is just under 13 euros, the most expensive less than 20 euros.
Although the Lidlerie restaurant has only been open for less than a week, it’s no fluke. Alén says that the opening will be done like in other restaurants. It means, among other things, the interior of the restaurant, changing the logo on the receipts, the clothes of the waiters, the music in the restaurant hall, the selection of bread, coffee, water.
– The customer comes to the Lidlerie restaurant, not Finnjävelin Sal, Alén reminds.
Alén says that a few years ago a Lidl restaurant was also opened in Sweden together with a top chef, but at the time the customers were not immediately told that it was a restaurant of the grocery store chain.
Henri Alén has designed the menu for his and Lidl’s pop-up restaurant. Pete Anikari
Lidl marketing manager Jonna Musa states that their project at the time was admired in Finland and the idea remained smoldering.
– We finally get to implement the idea, in the style of the Finnish team, of course. We’ve had the idea of a restaurant for a long time, and there have also been requests from customers for this.
With Tempus, we also want to remind you that Ruokakauppa’s raw materials are of high quality.
Alén is excited about the project, which gives many people who rarely go to restaurants the opportunity to eat in a restaurant.
Alén started planning the menu as usual, that is, by studying the ingredient lists. He went through the Excel lists and decided on the raw materials. According to Alén, one dish had to be put on the menu. Of course, it’s about risotto, which this time is a delicious risotto.
Alén promises to be in the Lidlers’ kitchen as much as possible.
– Let’s have fun just like we always do at a raffle, he laughs.
Although this time the package sizes are smaller than normal or the chocolate sold in the store has slightly different properties than the one used by professional kitchens.
Alén finds it especially funny that the restaurant has wines sold in European Lidls.
– His job was to get Lidl wines to the restaurant. We can’t sell them in Finland, at least not yet. In this regard, we needed help from our colleagues from other countries. It’s great that we get to taste our own wines for our customers, says Musa.
Who do you think will come to eat?
– We hope and believe that this restaurant will be of interest to a wide variety of people. Because the price level is so low, we believe that even those who usually cannot afford to go to top restaurants will find their way to Lidlerie, says Musa.
Alén is also on the same lines.
– I hope that there will be people who don’t normally visit us, I hope for all kinds of cats, from babies to adults.
In Finland, there have been combinations of a restaurant and a food court in the past.
A shopkeeper at Järvenpää’s K-Citymarket Markku Hautala founded in 2018 by the chef of the Sesonki restaurant Matti Jämsénin with. The restaurant’s ingredients were the same as those on sale in the food court.
Lidlerie is open from 25 to 29 November.