We arrive at Helsinki airport with an early Tuesday morning flight. It’s efficient and clean – as we know it from Copenhagen. When we’re comfortable in our seats on the train, the difference and breath taking beauty of this country starts to unfold, the land of a thousand lakes and trees, it already feels highly sustainable.
Nanna Ørum, and I (Mia Kristensen) are with Nordplus in Finland; Helsinki and Jyväskylä. We’re two assistant professors from University College Copenhagen teaching at the education “Nutrition and Health”. This trip is both an opportunity to be inspired by and explore sustainable food solutions, but also a networking opportunity, to meet likeminded teachers from JAMK University of Applied Sciences and discuss exchange of students and knowledge. Jväskylä offers several courses with a sustainability focus e.g. sustainable gastronomy, which could be appealing to our students. Our time in Jyväskylä is primarily spent on getting to know JAMK and to discuss the opportunity for an even closer collaboration.
Nanna and I are staying a Green Star Hotel, a new hotel highly focused on environmentally friendly solutions. They have the Nordic Ecolabel certification and on top of the hotel being highly efficient for business people, also both recycle station at the ground floor and in every room. On the walls are listed their sustainability goals – an inspiration, maybe we should all make our sustainable goals visible? After two nights in Jyväskylä our next destination was Helsinki.
At noon on our third day in Finland, we reach Helsinki to meet up with Akis Staboulis, who is teaching at Perho Culinary School. The school educates chefs, waiters and other degrees within the hospitality sector. We join him for lunch at their student driven restaurant, for a serving of pike. A fish we know from DK but never actually tasted, though it’s plentiful in the lakes in Denmark as well. Akis explain how the students works in teams in the restaurant, some for lunch, a new team for dinner. Even the ingredients are a matter of sourcing and educating at the same time, since the school has its own small farm, not far from the school, https://www.studentfarm.psu.edu/. Where they can grow and harvest vegetables. Since the restaurant is an educational arena, the prices are set a bit lower than normal for Helsinki, so a meal is affordable for a wider audience, a good example of a different kind of sustainability.
Upon recommendation, we visit the newly reopened Restaurant Nolla, to chat with co-founder Carlos Henriques. Entering the restaurant it seemed like a fine dining restaurant with a look we know from Copenhagen, but on the surface a normal restaurant. Talking to Carlos, we quickly discover that this is top of the list of Europe’s most sustainable restaurants. They have considered every detail, still with a clear focus on the dining experience and “customer journey”. The glasses are old beer bottles without the neck, the waiters shirts are made from old bed linen and they brew their own beer in-house. All the chefs are registrating their scraps and in the back end of the actual dining room there’s a composter – all parts of the ingredients are valued. Likewise Carlos explain that the packaging of the food is just as important. Therefore, they have a close collaboration with their suppliers of how to deliver the produce. Some of the producers have even changed the packaging on their products after delivering to Nolla. The sustainable mindset spreads like rings in one of the many finish lakes…
After three days of new expressions we got back to Copenhagen filled with inspiration and eager to look into how a closer collaboration could work. Finally, a big thank you to Minna Junttila and Francesca Allievi from JAMK for arranging meeting with Perho and Nolla, we’re grateful for your time and effort.
Places mentioned and relevant links:
https://www.restaurantnolla.com/eng
https://www.greenstar.fi/en/Home
Text and photos: Mia I Kristensen and Nanna Ørum, assistant professors from University College Copenhagen in Denmark on their Nordplus visit in Finland
Sustainable Nordic Food 