There are many great cafés in Turku, but I rarely visit them, although I'd like to. To change that, my friends and I decided to check out a café per month (or thereabouts), just for fun. Coffee, cake, and gossip, where's the bad?
First up: Gaggui. The name is a Turku dialect version of the Finnish word for cakes, and that's no accident; cakes are their specialty. The menu is in the Turku dialect, which probably won't mean much to any English readers, but in Finland, the dialect is considered funny. It's hard to explain, but some think it makes us sound like hicks or simpletons, maybe? There's also a bit of funny intonation involved, and the tendency to use the negative when asking questions. (Those aren't sticky buns, are they? vs. Are those sticky buns?) There's a humor publication called News from Turku that's news written entirely in the dialect. It's a big seller. Yeah, go figure.
Here's an excerpt from the site for the Finnish readers out there:
"Tervetuloo gagul ja kaffel. Meijä päivän gagguvalikoima koostuu gaguist, suklaagaguist, juustogaguist ja muist jälkkäriherkuist, sekä tuareist, kaffelas alus asti leivotuist kroisanteist ja herkullisist leivist. Gagguvalikoima vaihtelee melkee päivittäi, mut tiättyi suasikkei me leivotaa teil herkuttelijoil joka päiväks."
The cakes have names like Ai minttuu vai? (Oh, mint, you say?), Kamala magic (Awful Sweet), Varför Paris?(Why Paris (when we have Turku)), Heaven On Örth (self-explanatory, right?), and Eioota (Got Nothin') (the vegan and gluten free option).
I had the lemon-raspberry cake called "When Life Gives You Lemons." It was perfect.
Here's the address for anybody who wants to check it out. It's quite close to the railway station, but only a few blocks from the center of town (let's face it, we don't have that much town):
Humalistonkatu 15a
20100 Turku
Mon Closed
Tue-Fri 10-19
Sat 10-18
Sun12-18
