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Having decided to roll out the red carpet for Indian tourists, Finland’s tourism industry is racing against time to ensure that the visitors from the tropics feel right at home even while vacationing above the Arctic circle here. With Finnish flag carrier Finnair all set to commence the first direct service between capitals Helsinki and New Delhi starting October 30, the Finnish Tourist Board (FTB) is expecting a rush of visitors and is scouting for a few good Indian chefs who can teach the locals how to entertain the visitors’ palate. The FTB is likely to look for chefs either in New Delhi or Mumbai. The selected chef(s) would be flown to Finland for conducting seminars. “The FTB knows the importance of food for the Indian traveller. We will in November arrange a day, when an Indian chef will inform the food and beverage trade in Finland about the needs of culinary products, so that they can be prepared properly,” FTB Regional Director Sven Hansen said recently. Already, Finnair has tied up with Mumbai-based Ambassador Group for designing the in-flight menu for the Helsinki-New Delhi sector. While Ambassador’s chefs have begun training Finnair’s chefs, Hansen said the FTB would look for reputed chefs to impart training to the F&B staff of as many as 37 restaurants in Helsinki and around. Besides FTB, leading private tourism industry players like Lapland Safaris based above the Arctic Circle in Finland are also looking at getting its chefs trained in Indian cooking. Though Indian restaurant chains like Namaskar and Tandoor are doing good business across Finland, there is still a need for picking up a good chef from India, said Hansen. “The problem is they (Indian restaurants) have been here so long, that they have started cooking Indian food for Finns and not for Indians,” he said.
— PTI
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