Finns this week opened the ultimate underground restaurant with a four-course menu including escargot flambeed in Pernod. 

Popular Helsinki restaurant Muru set up a temporary eatery some 80 metres below ground in a limestone mine in the southern Finnish town of Lohja.   

Inspired by "pop-up" shops and restaurants, an urban trend of enterprising cooks and retailers setting up temporary shops in unusual spots, Muru calls its 10 night-only experiment a "pop down" restaurant.

"The main theme with the menu was Element Earth," said chef Timo Linnanmaki. 

In addition to the escargot served with fennel risotto, the 128-euro ($160) menu features smoked vendace in lemon oil, roasted veal tenderloin and hanger steak simmered in herb stock.

The mine is also the location for a laboratory of the elevator firm Kone, and diners are invited to don helmets and protection jackets for a tour down a 350-metre elevator shaft into the mine.
 
Tables have already sold out for the event, part of a series of programmes related to Helsinki's designation as this year's World Design Capital.