Food

Finnish cuisine is heavily influenced by its neighbors, the main staples being potatoes and bread with various fish and meat dishes on the side. Not exactly a gourmand's paradise, some Finnish specialties worth looking out for include:

- Baltic herring (silakka), a small, fatty and quite tasty fish available pickled, marinated, smoked, grilled and in countless other varieties
- Breadcheese (leipäjuusto or juustoleipä), a type of grilled curd best eaten with a dab of cloudberry jam
- Gravlax ("graavilohi"), a pan-Scandinavian appetizer of raw salted salmon
- Karelian stew (Karjalanpaisti), a heavy stew usually made from beef and pork (and optionally, lamb), carrots and onions. Usually served with potatoes.
- Karelian pies (karjalanpiirakka), an oval 7 by 10 cm baked pastry, traditionally baked with rye flour, containing rice porridge, eaten topped with butter and chopped egg. This is also a popular snack (often au naturel) among Finns
- Liver casserole (maksalaatikko), consisting of chopped liver, rice and raisins cooked in an oven; it tastes rather different from what you'd expect (and not liver-y at all), but many Finns hate the stuff anyway
- Loop sausage (lenkkimakkara), a large, mildly flavored sausage; best when grilled and topped with a dab of sweet Finnish mustard (sinappi), and beer
- Meat balls (lihapullat, lihapyörykät) are as popular (and tasty) as in neighboring Sweden
- Pea soup (hernekeitto), traditionally eaten with a dab of mustard and served on Thursdays; just watch out for the flatulence!
- Porridge (puuro), usually made from oats (kaura), barley (ohra), rice (riisi) and rye (ruis) and most often served for breakfast

- Reindeer (poro) dishes, especially sauteed reindeer shavings (poronkäristys, served with potato mash and lingonberries), not actually a part of the everyday Finnish diet but a tourist staple and common in the frigid North
- Smoked salmon (savulohi), not just the cold, thinly sliced, semi-raw kind but also fully cooked "warm" smoked salmon
- Swedish hash ("pyttipannu"), (originally from Sweden, Swedish: "pytt i panna") a hearty dish of potatoes, onions and any meaty leftovers on hand fried up in a pan and topped with an egg
- Vendace (muikku), a speciality in eastern Finland, a small fish served fried, heavily salted and typically with mashed potatoes

Bread (leipä) is served with every meal in Finland, and comes in a vast array of varieties. Typically Finnish ones include:

- hapankorppu, dry, crispy and slightly sour flatbread, occasionally sold overseas as Finncrisp
- limppu, catch-all term for big loaves of fresh bread
- näkkileipä, another type of dark, dried, crispy rye flatbread
- ruisleipä or rye bread, often dark, heavy and chewy
- rieska, unleavened bread made from wheat or potatoes, eaten fresh

Attack of the killer mushrooms

The false morel (korvasieni) has occasionally been dubbed the "Finnish fugu", as like the infamous Japanese pufferfish, an improperly prepared false morel can kill you. Fortunately, it's easily rendered safe by boiling (just don't breathe in the fumes!), and prepared mushrooms can be found in gourmet restaurants and even canned.