Timo Santala began work as the project manager for the Helsinki food culture strategy in November 2014. In addition to strategic guidelines, Santala provides the city with a face, ears and mouth for its food culture.

Timo Santala and a couple of friends came up with the idea for Restaurant Day in 2011. In a little over two years it had developed into the world’s biggest food carnival. Today, almost 70 countries have staged their own Restaurant Days. This has resulted in over 16,000 pop-up restaurants with over 1 180,000 mouths fed.

From the university’s perspective, Timo Santala’s study record is, well, challenging. The Master’s degree in five years did not exactly work out for him. He has chosen all kinds of interesting courses and ended up abandoning many of them. Santala moved from subject to subject following his interests without thinking about completing his degree.

Timo Santala has had so much experience in organising events that he is worth listening to.

Events and activities

• Helsingin ruokaradio, (’Helsinki food radio’) Radio Helsinki

• Let’s Eat Together on Facebook

• Ravintolapäivä on Facebook

• We Love Helsinki on Facebook

Interviews

• ”Chefs d’un jour” (‘Chefs for a day’), Le Monde 13 November 2014 (in French)

• ”Restaurant Day in Helsinki: Karneval mit Streetfood”, Der Spiegel…