Sweet as salt: Finnish cafe braces for Helsinki meeting with ‘Trumputin’ fusion pancakes
A Helsinki cafe is adding some salty-sweet flavor to the much-anticipated meeting between the US and Russian leaders with a fusion “Trumputin” meal, featuring pancakes with salmon, onions, vanilla and berries on one plate.
Finnish authorities are gearing up to host the one-on-one meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, having announced border closures and enhanced security measures.
Meanwhile, local businesses are trying to capitalize on the high-profile occasion, by coming up with new, politically themed, offerings for their customers.
One such business, Kaffekievari café, is promoting its brand new fusion meal called ‘Trumputin’ – a set of Russian blini and American pancakes served on one plate.
The salted blini is topped with smoked salmon, smetana (Russian sour cream), and chopped onion; while the American counterpart is quite the opposite, incorporating a pair of smaller-size pancakes powdered with sugar and berries, served alongside two scoops of vanilla ice cream.
Some might say the salty-sweet quality of the meal reflects the nature of the countries’ bilateral relations ahead of the top-level meeting, but the cafe itself says it didn’t intend to be political.
The ‘Trumputin’ is about “benevolent humor,” Tiina Launonen of Kaffekievar told Helsingin Uutiset newspaper. “People say that salt and sweet cannot be on the same plate,” she said, adding that mixing sweet and salty was about the balancing flavors in a single meal.
Launonen believes the meal – which sells for around €14 ($16) – is well balanced. “The smaller size of the American pancakes was determined by the need to fit them on the same plate with the blini,” she explained.
While unconventional, the ‘Trumputin’ is not the only gastronomic specialty to emerge ahead of the Helsinki summit. The Rock Paper Scissors Indie Brewery, based in the eastern city of Kuopio, made a limited-edition beer dubbed ‘Let’s Settle This Like Adults.’
The beverage’s label shows Trump and Putin facing each other, fists raised, as both men ready themselves for a round of the very game after which the brewery was named – rock-paper-scissors.
READ MORE: ‘Let’s settle this like adults’: Finnish craft brewery to release Trump-Putin summit beer
“We here at RPS Brewing were thrilled to hear that Mr Putin and Mr Trump decided to go heads up in our beloved capital Helsinki,” CEO Samuli Huhtanen told RT, referring to the inspiration behind the beer.
“Believe me when I tell you, no one knows problem solving better than us. We know they have difficult decisions to make, indifferences to solve, so we wanted to remind them that you can always settle things like adults, with rock-paper-scissors. So basically, we wanted to give our helping hand to world peace,” he added.
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