One of my favourite things about visiting a new country is seeing what food is popular. Going to a grocery store you will quickly see the differences and interesting food available. One of the things that stood out to me in Finland was the amount and variety of salmon. As a big fan of salmon, needless to say I was very happy about this! Their sushi was such a great quality, whether in a restaurant or takeaway.

The most interesting find from the Finnish grocery stories was the reindeer: sliced reindeer for sandwiches, fillets for roasts or stews, even tinned reindeer. I tried out some of the slices on a sandwich and found it to have a dark colour, strong task but it was nice.

In Finland Long Drinks are very popular, especially in summer with a few ice cubes thrown into a glass. It’s a mixer made with gin and has loads of flavours to choose from: Grapefruit, Citrus, Peach, Cranberry to name a few.

Ice creams were a pleasant discovery for me too. Finns really know how to do ice cream! I was so excited to find liquorice ice cream, I had no idea this existed and for me, being a big fan of liquorice it was definitely my favourite flavour. They also had different flavours of liquorice ice cream available. You can even buy liquorice ice cream at the grocery stores. This is one item at the Irish grocery stories I will certainly not be able to find and will miss! The other interesting flavour I discovered was pear which was surprisingly good.

Rye bread is really popular in Finland, even the McDonalds has an option of a sandwich with rye bread. I’m not the biggest fan of rye bread but decided to give it a try and it was surprisingly tasty.

I found lots of pastries and different flavours, meat pies which were fried – containing some rice and mince or a sausage.

At a market at Helsinki I decided to be brave and try eating Vendace – a small fried fish. You can eat the whole fish which contains very tiny bones which you can barely notice when you eat it. The taste was excellent – I got myself a full portion of it for a meal.

Foraging is big in Finland in summer – we were lucky enough to find a good harvest of Chanterelles in the forest which we cooked as part of our meals. Blueberries of course, which I found heaps of, and the occasional raspberry. I still hadn’t managed to find a strawberry though.