What you actually eat on a Helsinki food tour

Across the six tours the plate is remarkably consistent: cold-smoked reindeer, cured or smoked salmon and other local fish, dark sourdough rye bread, a fresh squeaky cheese, a cinnamon bun or another pastry, salty liquorice, and Finnish chocolate. Seven or eight items, handed over in small portions across two and a half to three hours, with non-alcoholic drinks alongside on most walks. Almost none of it was invented in Helsinki, which is the whole point — this city is where the rest of Finland arrives.

Tastings on the city tourSeven, plus drinks

Tastings on the coffee walkEight or more

Tastings on the Kallio walkEight-plus, drinks in

The rooftop walkSeven, plus lunch

The island tastingFive courses on a beach

What you cook yourselfSoup, meatballs, buns

The fish, which is where I would start

Every walk in this city has fish on it, and it is usually the part people underrate on the way in and talk about on the way out. The permanent counter trio is pickled herring, cured graavilohi and cold-smoked kylmäsavulohi. The city tour lists local fish and caviar delicacies; the coffee walk puts cold-smoked salmon next to vendace on rye bread, which is a small lake fish floured and fried whole, head and bones and all. If you want to understand why a Finn buys fish at a counter rather than a supermarket, stand at one for five minutes and watch how specific the questions get.

The reindeer, which came from a thousand kilometres north

Cold-smoked reindeer appears on the city tour, the rooftop walk, the coffee walk as Lappish dried meat and the island tasting. It arrives as thin dark slices on a board, drier and more concentrated than smoked beef, and it is the item most likely to make somebody go quiet. It is also the clearest example of the thing this whole site is about: reindeer is Lapland food, eaten in a harbour city eleven hundred kilometres south of the herds. What reindeer tastes like.

The bread underneath everything

Ruisleipä is dark sourdough rye, sour and dense, often baked in a ring with a hole in the middle so it could be hung on a pole to dry. It is on every single one of the six tours, usually as the base for something else. Visitors who expect a soft sandwich loaf get a shock, and I have watched plenty of people decide at the first bite that they dislike it and at the fourth that they will be taking two rings home. Give it the fourth bite. Rye bread, explained.

Dark Finnish sourdough rye bread on a market-hall counter — Ruisleipä: sour, dense, and the base of most of what you will be handed.

The cheese that squeaks

Leipäjuusto, bread cheese, is a fresh cow's-milk cheese baked until it browns in patches. It comes from Ostrobothnia and Lapland, it squeaks against your teeth, and it is served warm with cloudberry jam — lakka, the amber berry that grows in northern bogs. Local cheese is named on the city tour, the rooftop walk and the coffee walk. It is the tasting that divides a group least: almost nobody dislikes it.

The sweet that divides a group most

Salmiakki is salty liquorice flavoured with ammonium chloride. It is on the coffee walk by name, it turns up on most of the others, and it is the single item I would want explained to me before it went in my mouth. Half a group loves it immediately; the other half makes a face that the guide has seen four hundred times. Finnish chocolate goes down easier — the blue-wrapped milk bar is the national one, and the city tour calls it Finnish blue chocolate. Salmiakki, honestly.

The pastry and the coffee, which are the genuinely local part

Everything above came to Helsinki from somewhere else in Finland. The coffee habit did not. Finns drink more coffee per head than any country on earth, around 12 kg of beans per person per year, the default is light-roast filter, and the kahvitauko is written into working life rather than treated as a luxury. The korvapuusti — cardamom and cinnamon, cut and pressed so the layers fan out, literally a slapped ear — exists to be eaten next to it. The coffee-culture walk puts the bun and the filter coffee together on purpose, which is the closest thing this city has to a national meal. The bun and the coffee habit.

The two tours where the plate is different

The cooking class is not a tasting board. You make creamy salmon soup, meatballs with mashed potato and lingonberry jam, and korvapuusti, in a private home on Lauttasaari, six people maximum, and then you eat them. It is the only listing on this site where you leave with written recipes. The island tasting is a five-part spread eaten outdoors on Pihlajasaari after a waterbus crossing and a walk over sand beach and rock shore: reindeer, fish, traditional breads, a dessert and organic blueberry juice. Summer only, because the waterbus does not run in winter.

What is not on any of the boards

No alcohol is included anywhere. Mämmi, the Easter rye pudding, is seasonal and you will not meet it in July. Poronkäristys, sautéed reindeer with mash and lingonberry, is a restaurant dish rather than a tasting item. And a tasting board is not lunch on four of the six walks, so eat something first if your day started early. The shortlist of what to chase afterwards is on the must-eat page, and the five dishes a Finn would name first are on the top dishes page.

Cathedral and the Old Market Hall

Check dates & book

One thing worth repeating, because I was asked it most days at the counter: neither market hall charges you to come in. Vanha Kauppahalli and Hakaniemen Kauppahalli are buildings, not attractions, and the door is open to anybody. What you book on this site is the guide who walks you between the counters and knows which of the three salmon is the one you actually want. The halls with a guide, and the Old Market Hall on its own.

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Frequently asked questions

How many tastings do you get on a Helsinki food tour?

Seven on the three-hour city tour, eight or more on the coffee-culture walk and on the Kallio walk, seven plus lunch on the rooftop one, and five courses on the island tasting. The cooking class is a different shape: you make three dishes and eat them. Compare them on the choosing page.

Is a food tour enough for a meal?

On the rooftop walk yes, because lunch is included, and on the cooking class yes, because you cook a full meal. On the city tour, the coffee walk and the island tasting the portions are tasting portions and you will want dinner afterwards, which in Finland happens early: Finnish dinner time.

What is the strangest thing you get handed?

Salmiakki, without much competition. It is salty liquorice flavoured with ammonium chloride and it splits every group I have ever seen taste it. Warm squeaky cheese with cloudberry jam is the second surprise and a far easier one: salmiakki explained.

Do the tours include drinks?

Non-alcoholic drinks are included on the city tour, the Kallio walk and the island tasting, and water bottles on the coffee walk. Alcohol is excluded on all six listings without exception. The rooftop walk ends at a bar where you buy your own: tours with drinks.