Finland Times

Rovaniemi celebrated the world’s biggest food carnival “Restaurant Day” on November 16, setting up five one-day popup restaurants in different parts of the city. 

Hundreds of food lovers from Rovaniemi enjoyed what the amazing one-day restaurants at Rovakatu’s Café Kalto, Valtakatu’s Krety Food, Jorma Eton Tie’s Piano Café & Pien Suklaopuoti, Vapaudentie’s Kosmo Toast and Veitikantie’s Maya Café had to offer.

The Restaurant Day was coined by three friends – Antti Tuomola, Olli Sirén and TimoSantala – in 2011 in Helsinki.

The first Restaurant Day on May 21, 2011 featured 45 popup restaurants in 13 places around Finland.

The second Restaurant Day was observed the following August and featured around 200 popup restaurants in four different countries. 

About 8,500 one-day restaurants in 55 countries had been set up in the past two and a half years where an estimated 930,000 customers had been served by 35,000 restaurateurs. 

A group of students from the department of Art and Design at the University of Lapland set up a popup restaurant called Café Kaltu in Rovakatu.

They exhibited some of their artworks and entertained some 100 customers with their home-made foods. 

A member of Café Kaltu told the Finland Times: “This is a great opportunity for us to promote ourselves. This event would certainly inspire us for the future because many customers have appreciated our work.” 

Café Kaltu’s customers Jaatinen Eeva and Kunnari Taina told the Finland Times that it was a new event for them and it was wonderful to see such a great idea of entertainment as well as enjoying a different kind of taste. 

Restaurant Day is celebrated in February, May, August and November in different countries around the world.

It is generally an open event where anyone can set up a restaurant, café or a bar for a day.

This one day restaurant can be arranged anywhere and any place such as at home, at office, on a street corner, in a garden or inner courtyard, at a park, or on the beach where only imagination is the limit.