Eat & Joy

THE FINNS ARE A MODEST PEOPLE,
Australian Financial Rewiev 12/2005

Eat&Joy, Ute Junker
Photo Aki Arjola
Illustration Edwina White

Journalist Ute Junker.

Ask them about their country and, instead of boasting about their economy – an underreported success story that consistently wins plaudits for its competitiveness and growth rate – or even about their dashing Formula One champions, including Kimi Räikkönen and Mika Häkkinen – they’ll hastily tell you that Finland once received a big zero in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Finns seem to expect that the world will think the worst of them, and to take a certain grim pleasure when it does. But there are some things even they find hard to stomach. 2005 became the country’s annus horribilis after not only French President Jacques Chirac but also Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi slated Finland for having the worst food in Europe. The culinary league table is one that no one wants to bottom on a continent that takes food seriously and vven the Finns weren’t taking that one lying down. By sheer coincidence, 2005 also marked the first-ever Finnish food festival, an event that very quickly became a test of national pride.

The curiously named Eat & Joy festival, poised perilously in the imperative, took place last September, coinciding with Helsinki Design Week. Over 80 international journalists turned up with just one question on their collective mind: just how bad can Finnish food be? That press contingent, including representatives from El Mundo, Deutsche Welle, Time Out and Country Living, were shepherded through a jam-packed program of 80-plus events crammed into four days, with multiple lunches and dinners to be faced every day. Aside from the meals, focused variously on Finnish game birds, Cossack cuisine and apples, journalists could opt for early-morning visits to breweries, bar crawls stretching into the other side of the morning or, if they had the constitution, both.

Then there were the cultural events. A contingent of design journalists from New York, easily distinguished by their perfectly manicured eyebrows, had a lot of questions about the scheduled visit to the World Sauna Association. “Is it compulsory?” “Do you have to get naked?” To their relief, the answer to both was no. The Russian contingent said very little – in English, anyway – but greeted everything, including the prospect of a naked sauna session, with an enthusiastic smile.

Illustration by Edwina White. This is Helsinki, not!

Most of the visitors came to the experience without preconceptions. They admitted knowing little about Finnish food, aside from the fact that it features a lot of fish. Which should perhaps have prepared them for the rather idiosyncratic Eat & Joy opening drinks, held on top of one of Helsinki’s hip hotels. Guests gasped at the panoramic view, and gasped again when presented with their welcoming drink. It wasn’t just the vessel, although that was noteworthy in itself: a cross between a shot-glass and a chandelier, each glass had three tumblers brimming with koskenkorva, the lethal local vodka-like spirit. The pièce de résistance, however, was the garnish: a whole raw fish, the length of your thumb.

Stunned, we watched as the Finns enthusiastically swallowed the thing whole, head, tail, and all. In the spirit of gourmet adventure, I resolved to do the same. It took me all three shots of koskenkorva to get up the courage – at which point I decided it was probably not wise to add a raw fish to what was already swishing around in my stomach.

Eat & Joy offered plenty of other opportunities to sample Finland’s piscatorial delights, and even more opportunities to drink yourself senseless. The extraordinary number of scheduled meals was exceeded only by the amount of alcohol on offer. Occasionally, food seemed to get left off the menu entirely. Two of the New Yorkers dined out on their experience at the very hip Mecca restaurant, where their special Eat & Joy sampling menu consisting of a glass of sake, followed by a shot glass of melon soup, a smaller shot glass of foie gras soup, and a ‘refresher’ course of gelled gin and tonic served with lemon froth. Dessert was a fried banana served with chocolate, berry sauce, cream and fudge. That is, apparently, what passes for a balanced meal in Finland.

The Finnish fondness for a tipple leads to my first theory of Finnish food: the Finns don’t care what they eat, because they’re too drunk to taste it. This theory is reinforced by a visit to Saslik, a popular Russian restaurant. While a string quartet saws away at top volume, effectively killing all conversation, we are presented with a never-ending array of not particularly appetising appetisers: herring in green sauce, followed by herring in Baltic sauce, followed by herring marinated in red wine, followed by a boiled egg. Fortunately, each appetiser is accompanied by a shot of vodka: juniper followed by blackcurrant followed by cranberry. Before long, I give up on the food and just stick with the hard stuff.

Not everyone shares my opinion of Saslik. The Russian contingent is voluble in their enthusiasm. They also love Saaga, a restaurant specialising in Lapp delicacies. It’s not hard to see why. The décor may be different – instead of red wallpaper, white lace, and photos of the Romanovs, there are wood furnishings and wooden chandeliers shaped like reindeer horns – but the eatable offerings are familiar: lots of rye bread, lots of chewy meat, not much in the vegetable department.

However, the Lapp restaurant does offer the opportunity to feast on exotic fare from Finland’s northern regions, such as snow grouse, cloudberries, bear and reindeer. Reindeer apparently has a distinctive, game taste, but the first time I sample it, at yet another Eat & Joy party, it’s been minced, cloaked in sour cream, and handed out as an hors d’ouevre, Something of the flavour seems to have gotten lost in the process. I’m therefore bemused to see an English photographer following the waiter around, scoffing as many of the morsels as she can reach. When she sees my expression, she mutters defensively, through a mouthful of reindeer and sour cream, “I’m bloody starving. I only had one lunch today.”

My Drinking Theory of Finnish Cuisine is superceded, however, after a visit to Fish Restaurant Havis, where I form an alternative theory: being typical Scandinavians, Finns don’t care what food tastes like as long as it looks good. This new theory is born while I’m leafing through Havis’s extraordinary menu. Each page of the menu lists a different dish – blue mussel soup, or glow-fried lavaret with fennel and octopus ragout and citrus vinaigrette – along with the suggested wine accompaniment and the name of the china on which it will be served (yes, each dish comes on its own specific china. This is Scandinavia.) Dominating the page is an oversized photo – of the dish rather than what’s on it. Thus, on the blue mussel soup page, you’ll find a photo of Finnish designer Stefan Lindfors’s signature Ego cup. If you like the look of the Ego cup, you can even buy it at the restaurant, along with all the other tableware used.

SO FAR, THIS DESIGN-over-taste theory looks like it might fly. There’s one hitch: the food at Fish Restaurant Havis, when it arrives, is delicious. And it’s not just Havis. For a city of half a million people, with a city centre so compact you need never hop on a tram, Helsinki has a startling array of stylish restaurants offering quality food. Tucked away in their remote corner of Europe, Finnish foodies reveal themselves to be up-to-date with trends around the world, even our own far-flung corner. Everyone I talk to speaks knowledgeably about Tetsuya and Bill Granger, although few have ever made the trip.

Perhaps that’s why they don’t appreciate how impressive their home-grown offerings are. A dinner at Chez Dominique, where five courses cost a very reasonable c79 ($126), proves that chef Hans Välimäki’s two Michelin stars are deserved. Over at La Cocina, Finnish chef Sami Rekola serves up outstanding Catalan and Basque dishes, such as rabbit with corn mousse and tomato, and deer with tonka bean, black pepper, zucchini flower and quince. When he presents a new dessert creation, inspired by a Carolina Herrera perfume, I think he’s gone too far – but, amazingly, it works. The dessert not only smells just like the perfume but the mix of marshmallow, caramel, vanilla, bergamot, pink pepper and lemon tastes absolutely delicious too.

Sophisticated dining culture is a new thing in Finland, where for many years, restrictive alcohol-licensing laws made life difficult for would-be restaurateurs. Even today, most restaurants must close on Sundays – one of the rare exceptions is Sundman’s Krog, where locals flock for a Sunday buffet featuring herring done in seven different ways (at least six ways too many, if you ask me). Another novelty is the growing market for local gourmet produce. With long dark northern winters, Finland produces only a limited harvest, but it’s nonetheless impressive. Best places for browsing are the open-air harbourside markets, where piles of chanterelle mushrooms go cheap and fishermen sell their produce straight off the back of the boat. Or the ornate market hall next door, where specialist stalls sell fish, meat, cheese, cakes and sweets.

The belated appreciation of home-grown produce is also linked to Finland’s restrictive laws. Hans Välimäki remembers a time not so long ago when apples were a delicacy, thanks to a ban on imported produce. Naturally, when these protectionist restrictions were lifted, the Finns went mad for the imports they’d so long been denied. Now the tide is turning, and Finns are beginning to appreciate their own not-inconsiderable treasures.

Local dairies, in particular, produce a delicious range of quality cheeses, including a goat gruyère from Juustoportti; Viini tarhuri, a nutty Tilsit with a rind washed with red wine and herbs; and the Valio black label Emmental, perhaps Finland’s premier cheese. Then there are traditional delicacies such as nahkiainen. It’s a delicious eel-like fish smoked with honey and sugar, served with sweet mustard and, perhaps predictably, eaten whole – head, tail and all.

For all the fine dining and produce tasting, most of the journalists, when asked to nominate a trip highlight, choose the week’s most rustic activity, a visit to the unspoiled, island-studded Inkoo Archipelago. In the program, the trip is described as a chance for journalists to create their own meal, catching fish and gathering mushrooms and berries but, despite dutifully tramping all over one of the islands, we fail to gather a single mushroom or berry or to catch a fish.
This may be because the journalists are more focused on comparing notes on their Helsinki nightlife experiences. Some have been sampling Helsinki’s bars, an eccentric collection which ranges from tollbooth-sized affairs done out like Soviet-era lounge rooms, to the astonishing Club Privé, an enormous underground complex that resembles a Russian mafia hang-out, complete with gold-flocked wallpaper and chandeliers. A few intrepid souls, including just one of the well-groomed New Yorkers and, predictably, a whole minibus full of Russians, braved the sauna adventure, which they rave about – naked sauna action, midnight dips in the Baltic followed by roasting sausages on an open fire, clad in towels and drinking beer. Those who didn’t go profess disappointment but look vastly relieved.

Having accurately assessed the group’s lack of hunting and gathering skills, organisers have plenty of supplies on stand-by, and three chefs from Helsinki’s Hotel Vaakuna build an open fire and prepare fish using traditional methods, including the smoke box, in which fish is roasted with juniper, sugar and spices, and glow-frying, where fish is pegged to a wooden board and stood near the fire to cook. It’s the Finnish equivalent of a barbecue, a typical family feast, and possibly the most delicious meal of the week.

As it turns out, it’s not just the foreigners who go home with a revised opinion on Finnish food. Local journalists, who spend the four days recording the opinions of the visitors, seem surprised and gratified. Which, it turns out, is precisely what the organisers hoped to achieve. “One of the reasons we wanted international attention was to get the Finns … appreciating what we have,” says one of the organisers. “Finns are very modest people – we really don’t appreciate what we have.”