The Concept

Viisi Tähteä ("Five Stars"), a trade magazine for the restaurant and hotel business, gives annual awards to Finnish ingredients and their producers. In the 'Best of Finland' competition a jury of chefs selects the top Finnish foods, drinks, and ideas. The competing products and services are designed for professional kitchens. By bringing together producers and buyers, new markets are created for smaller producers as well.

The award-winning tastes of the 'Best of Finland' competition are available in a number of participating Eat & Joy restaurants.

Quality Beats Quantity

A couple of claims:
1. Quality beats quantity, and people are ready to pay a little extra for it.

2. Purity, safety, full aroma, and genuine flavor are qualities that mark products by small, local Finnish producers.

3. Since restaurant professionals are now interested in products from quality Finnish small producers, the consumer will soon learn to demand them. Why? Because restaurants foresee and create trends.

4. Chefs are not only celebrities, they are becoming social opinion leaders.

The signs of change are in the air. We are rediscovering the countryside, and the countryside is finding its identity: not as a storehouse of ingredients but as a producer of sophisticated flavors.

An increasing number of chefs, restaurant clients, and amateur cooks have realized that there are vast differences in taste between "ingredients" and ingredients. This is best seen with seasonal products. Everything is available throughout the year, but for the most part of the year the flavors of imported ingredients only bring disappointments.


Nothing beats the equivalent Finnish product when it is the natural season for that product. As Minister of Agriculture Juha Korkeaoja smartly put it: "The new potato is the Finnish asparagus."

Focus on the consumer

For the consumer this means a need to know what he is eating, where it came from, how it has been grown, who has produced it, and, most importantly, does it taste like anything. Eating food that actually has genuine flavor is a heart-warming experience: tasting the food's flavor combined with the extra nuances given by the site where it was grown. Sound like evaluating wines? Why not - after all, nuances of taste are made up by the sum of small things and the control over the details of a process.

The Best of Finland is not a disinterested competition. It has a mission. The mission is to imbue farm and gastronomy politics with an earnest task of promoting small producers, products, and services, to provide a link to restaurant kitchens - and to be a part of the change.

RESULTS OF THE BEST OF FINLAND 2005 AWARDS BY VIISI TÄHTEÄ MAGAZINE.

Best of Finland: Ingredient - Benjam's Grain Pork, Benjamin Lihatori
Best of Finland: Food - Wild Reindeer of Salla, Cool-smoked roast of reindeer, Maltiolan Jaloste Ltd.
Best of Finland: Drink - tied 1st place: Sparkling New Spruce Shoots, Korpihilla Ritva Kokko Ltd.
- tied 1st place: Ström Vodka, Atlantico Beverages Ltd, maker Shaman Spirits Ltd.
Best of Finland: Process - "Lamb from Lapland" product family, Veljekset Rönkä Ltd.
Best of Finland: Service Concept - Chef Wotkin's, Meat Wholesales Veijo Votkin Ltd.
Best of Finland: Idea - Berry juice dispenser by Marjavasu Ltd.
Best of Finland: Contribution to Food Culture - Chef Markus Maulavirta's book "Mestari Markuksen Ruokamatka" ("The Gastronomic Journey of Master Markus").