Ravintolapäivä : Sano Vhancha

Here in Finland bars and restaurants are no longer the only dining option in town as now a new dining trend has been invited. Introduced last year in Helsinki by a group of friends, "Ravintolapäivä" (lit. Restaurant Day) means pop-up restaurants for only one day at a time and only four times a year. It becomes a new option for diners to try new tastes at someone's home, and for totally amateur cooks to serve their food to friends, family or even strangers in their home-restaurant at their most confidence and creativity.

I happened to be invited to join in one Ravintolapäivä called "Sano Vhancha" (lit. Small Kitchen) as part of the team. It was our Finnish friend, Päivi, who gave us idea and gathered all of us. We planed to serve Nepalese food and do our best to deliver the best of Nepal. The food would be prepared by our Nepalese friends, Ramesh and Prabesh, and Päivi and I would assist them. We planed two months in advance by Päivi organizing all publicity work by herself vie FB, website, friends and neighbors. Two weeks before Ravintolapäivä, a journalist from local newspaper visited and took our picture. Then we found an article about Sano Vhancha and our photo published on "Viikkouutiset" newspaper. Just one week before the the Restaurant Day, our 40 diner-seats were fully booked and some diners were willing to even queue up in case there would be any cancellation. Two days before RP, we had our last meeting. We transformed Päivi's living room to a small restaurant, and prepared all ingredients. 

When the day came we were incredibly busy and were surprised by success. Ramesh, Prabesh and Päivi were up very early to start cooking. I arrived at the kitchen around 8.30 am and found myself unable to stay still as there were always work to do...chopping, cooking, cleaning, washing, tasting, etc. We divided the whole day into 5 serving groups starting from 11.00, 13.00, 15.00, 17.00 and 19.00, each group came 8-10 diners, but several groups grew bigger than 10 diners to as big as 16 as we could not refuse callers who would really like to come. Four of us worked all the time all day long. At the end of the day the kitchen looked as if it had been stormed. We were so exhausted that we could hardly stand on our feet, but were at our utmost happiness. People told us that the wonderful flavors from our kitchen spread up to a couple of hundred meters from the house and guided them to the restaurant. And everyone liked the food we made and the services we offered. We ended up serving 63 diners...this is unbelievable!

Additional information in English about Ravintolapäivä :  http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.restaurantday.org%2F&h=KAQFtGAwo