I recently went on a business trip to Helsinki, Finland. It is the second time I went there this year and so far I haven’t managed to discover much about the culture, the cuisine or the people. But from what I have gathered, the overall concept of this country seems to be about surviving in this weird no man’s land between Russia and Scandinavia, while speaking a language nobody understands, freezing your derriere off and coping with all this by consuming copious amounts of alcohol and meatballs. I admit that I generally associated Finland with unrefined food, especially after reading the Wikipedia entry on Finnish cuisine, and how it continuously got slammed by various European heads of state. It came as some surprise, therefore, that it was in Helsinki, where I’ve had one of the best meals of this year.
