Finland’s Grand Cru raises

He investors include Idinvest Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and Nokia Growth Partners. To date, the company has raised more than $16 million.“We are impressed with Grand Cru’s team of mobile gaming veterans. They have created a great title and combined it with unique in-house developed technology,” said Walter Masalin of Nokia Growth Partners in a statement. “Growth in mobile gaming is accelerating and we are excited to be part of it.”

The company is starting to show off Supernauts, a 3D creative social game in which players build and share their own, unique worlds. The characters travel to a flooded Earth to rescue humans. The game was inspired by Minecraft and other casual sandbox games. In the game, each player gets a customizable, semi-private space where they can create and craft blocks and materials such as clay, bricks, concrete, wood, and tile. They can then use those materials to build structures. It has more than 50 levels in a variety of cities on Earth. Each level has 3D physics puzzles where the player has to rescue Earthlings by getting them to safety by building bridges, clearing paths, and Ceramic tile.

“At Grand Cru, our name derives from our ultimate goal of delivering outstanding products that raise the bar on quality, and our commitment has been recognized and bolstered by these strategic investments from partners such as Idinvest, Qualcomm Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners.,” said Markus Pasula, the cofounder and CEO of Grand Cru. “Our soon-to-be-released first title, Supernauts, is a mass-market world-building game for iOS that is truly social, allowing players to solve puzzles and create shareable worlds, brick-by-brick.”

Pasula and five other Finnish game veterans formed the company to make games with the potential for broad appeal. Grand Cru has more than 20 employees. The company is headquartered in the bohemian district of Helsinki called Kallio, which has the most bars per capita in Finland.

 You will wait for a table, as you always have, even though the new Franny's has double the capacity of the old one. On a recent Sunday afternoon, when nine empty two-top tables were set and ready for customers, a smiling hostess said we would be seated in 10 to 15 minutes. Only farm-to-table is ingrained in this restaurant's culture, not people to table.

It's been almost 10 years since Franny's opened in Brooklyn, a five-minute walk down Flatbush Ave. from its present location. Crowds gathered. Nothing much has changed, although now you can reserve for parties of eight to 12. Come to think of it, that's a lot that has changed.

Franny's is a spiritual cousin to Alice Waters's Chez Panisse, the Berkeley restaurant that more than 40 years ago changed how people thought about sustainable and seasonal food. Franny's is so principled and so cherished that NYC health inspectors genuflect upon entering.

When the original opened, people on this coast were just beginning to think about these concepts. These days everybody knows about that stuff, the organics and biodynamics, the buying locally and eating healthfully. While such passions have been matched by similarly themed establishments, Franny's remains the flagship. If its ideals aren't quite so revelatory any more, they remain as alluring as ever to those who mob the place.

The new Franny's has a bar, several dining areas, and a lot of inexpensive-looking wood-and-metal shelving stacked with cordwood for the pizza ovens, which are illogically but intriguingly bedecked with Mexican-style tiles. The walls are mostly white subway tile. My guest insisted that the blond-wood chairs where we finally were seated resembled the ones she was assigned in elementary school. She said the hard banquette where I sat reminded her of the bench in her childhood bedroom, which had a seat that flipped up so toys could be stored underneath.
Franny's has never been lovely. That hasn't changed. The black matte finish out front—what rappers call "murdered out" when they see it on automobiles—seems poorly chosen, but perhaps Franny's is out to attract a new generation of diners with fast cars.

On that first visit, during the 10-15 minute wait at the bar, my friend attracted substantial attention from a guy sitting on the other side of her. He even offered her a taste of his drink. That seemed a little racy for a wholesome spot like Franny's. Maybe the new generation has already arrived.

 Should you not wish to drink while awaiting a table, I can suggest ways to pass the time. Walk downstairs to one of the rest rooms and count the rolls of toilet paper stacked there. Mine had 88. Or try deciphering the exceedingly ambitious, highly curated, all-Italian wine list.

It might be the geekiest list in America, incomprehensible to normal human life forms. I know something about wine, but I was lost amidst unknown names and unhelpful organization.

On visit three I brought a wine director for a restaurant group with me. She looked at the list and said, "I need an hour to figure this out." Franny's has no sommelier on the floor. The waiters try to assist, but they're overmatched. I asked one of them how diners navigate this, and she replied, "Fake it, ask for help, or order the cheapest bottle on the list."

Fear not. You can triumph. Transport your mind to a world beyond Pinot Grigio. Ignore vintage dates unless you're looking for a red over $100, and there are few of those. Look for a grape you might recognize—vermentino, kerner, dolcetto, nebbiolo. There's even Chardonnay. The 2009 Scaglione Barbera is a simple red of perfect clarity.

Click on their website http://www.tilees.com/.