Food Studio

Let me bring you songs from the wood To make you feel much better than you could know Dust you down from tip to toe Show you how the garden grows Hold you steady as you go

The third weekend of March this year, the city invited street food vendors, organizers, chefs and journalists to Streat Helsinki, a two-day street food conference and festival aiming to raise a vibrant and interesting street food culture in Scandinavia. We were there to listen, get inspired and feast on all sorts of street food.

A Saturday afternoon of early fall, a group of food lovers, art lovers and lovers of history, having been enticed by the promises of Food Studio’s ninth event, met at Aker Brygge to begin their voyage towards an evening of eating in the shadow of Munch.

OSLO. Dark grey sky, it could almost pass as night. It’s Saturday. Restaurant Day. On the lawn between the Academy of Art and the freezing river Akerselva lays a tiny hut. It wasn't here yesterday.

Oslo`s king of coffee, Tim Wendelboe, has developed a new, fabulous coffee ice cream. With both ground espresso beans and fluid espresso, the taste is complex and rich, and not too sweet. We served it in a traditional, Norwegian “krumkake” shaped as cones.

After a long, hot summer, the woods are changing and preparing for autumn. The change can be felt in the air, which is now filled with the smells of berries, herbs and fungus. It is the time just before harvest, and the time when the cattle come back from summer dairy. It is the warmest month of the year, when the fish seek to the deepest part of the lakes to cool off. The dense forest is moist, hot and mystically dark – intensively yielding its last produce before the inset of autumn.

This summer, Food Studio crossed the sea to bring a Nordic Get Away experience to the french capital. We spent an evening biking through Paris, visiting Holybelly and Parc de Belleville for a herbology workshop, before sitting down and enjoy a picknick with fresh vegetables from the market.

Winter is a difficult season for finding food. Still, it gives you a few advantages – things are easier to preserve, for instance. And if you work hard enough, you might just find enough for a hearty meal deep within the snowy woods.

Restaurants in Oslo want more organic and locally produced food. Farmers in Eastern Norway need help with logistics and more insight as to what restaurants want. Nofima’s network called Chefs & Farmers, "Kokken og Bonden", is aiming to enhance the ties between innovative farmers and the best chefs in the city.

I remember imagining Tasmania, when I was a little girl, as a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. Far, very far away from my country. I thought only Tasmanian devils would inhabit this land, swirling and roaring around just like in the cartoon.

For the Japanese chef Masayo Funakoshi it is vital to have close bonds to food producers and foragers. She is also an artist at heart, which shows in her cooking. We went fishing for food in the picturesque Oslo Fjord.

Time flies when you are having fun - and the last six months have been full of exciting projects and travels for us in Food Studio. One of them we still haven’t shared with you. Until now.

Intrigued by food habits, I've always looked for links between people around the world and I admire how food connects things. I've been trying to learn as many languages as possible to be able to communicate with everyone but I found the most international language that exists is food.

Since 1881 Iittala’s timeless design has gone from being familiar in Finland and Scandinavia, to becoming a well known table- and cookware brand all over the world. This particular event was meant to inspire people to rethink how we gather around tables and food. How do we set aside time to eat with friends and family? How do we not just decorate our tables for weekends and special events, but for weekdays too? Iittala wanted to focus on just this and to inspire people to make room to meet around food in their busy lives.