
Das Restaurant ist in der Rikhardinkatu 4!

... Teil 2Pizzas, egg-butter and Article 141 support programmes
By Anna Karismo
Some while ago, Silvio Berlusconi and Jacques Chirac publicly put down Finnish food. They were of course quite right.
It is not particularly difficult to work out that on the world-famous dishes scale our food is pretty much of a non-starter.
And the reason is equally clear: not even the Finns themselves value their own cuisine.
Where you will find tapas prominently displayed on the streets of Barcelona or smørrebrød in Copenhagen, what you are offered in Helsinki is "international cuisine".
Let us imagine for a moment that round, flat oven-baked bread topped with tomato sauce and oregano, or a cheese that has been aged in a cellar for months until it goes mouldy were both gastronomic items developed here.
Does anyone believe that they would be world-renowned delicacies?
With a Finnish pedigree, pizza and blue cheese would in all probability sound like they belong in the "weird local specialities" department, alongside mämmi at Easter or the semi-circular lörtsy pies you can find in the markets up in Savo.
Our fundamental lack of culinary culture is a perfect example of how the Finns adapt to the customs of others.
Finland has even modified its own culture in order to promote this kind of adaptation.
We sell ourselves things like pizza with reindeer topping and hamburgers stuck between rye-bread buns, but what has happened to the product development work on such things as traditional Finnish salmon soupor sautéed reindeer?
When are we going to see a chain of takeaway eateries specialised in Karelian pasties and egg-butter?
If the reader snorts and harrumphs disdainfully at this point in the proceedings, it is only a reflection of the typical Finnish attitude: Finnish food cannot hold a candle to fast food.
Our grovelling culinary humility takes on a broader significance when we examine Finnish behaviour at the EU level.
This autumn will see the start of agricultural support negotiations, or the negotiations on Article 141 of the Finnish Treaty of Accession into the European Union.
"141-Support" is the EU funding that the Finnish accession negotiators more than a decade ago believed could be paid out to farmers in Southern Finland in perpetuity - until a blunt message arrived from the European Commission to the effect that the support is an outdated temporary measure, or at least it will have to be reduced.
Since that disclosure there have been discussions on 141-Support grants on three occasions, because the Commission is not willing to make the funding a permanent fixture.
Why not? The negotiators need only take a look in the mirror. Finland has no clear political strategy on agriculture and foodstuffs.
Even so, there would be perfectly adequate grounds for making the grants permanent, since our northern location is presumably a permanent handicap to growing things.
It does seem rather curious to have a support system that would make food production a profitable enterprise only in the north of the country.
The French get support from Brussels not only to produce a lake of excess wine, but also to dispose of this overproduction.
The Greeks and the Spanish on the other hand get support for their olive oil production, even though the fruit in the intensive farming olive groves more or less grows by itself.
As long as the World Trade Orgnization tolerates EU supports in some shape or form, then Southern Finland surely deserves its own share.
The countries of Southern Europe manage to get their way in agricultural support negotiations because of their stronger food culture.
Even though for years it has been possible to get better French cuisine from a number of Helsinki restaurants than from Paris itself, the myth of French food lives on, in great part through the healthy self-esteem of our Gallic EU colleagues.
In its foodstuffs policies, too, Finland meekly defers to the will of other EU states.
The government has announced that it would even like to set the table ready for the Commission at the upcoming 141-Support talks. It intends to seek "realistically achievable numbers".
In simple words we can all understand, this means there will be no attempt to preserve the support grants at their existing level, because we don't want to tick off the Commisioners.
When he was slagging Finnish food, Jacques Chirac called it the worst in Europe, worse even than what the British have to contend with.
How did the Brits react to this jibe? They got mad and they set about getting even.
And what about Finland? The Office of the Prime Minister drew up special guidelines for the dishes to be served during our six-month stint as the EU Presidency. Chefs were called in to a cabinet session for advance briefing.
So much for our self-esteem.
Hier eine kurze Rezension. Immer noch :thumbusu:sunny1011 schrieb am 03.11.2005 20:22
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