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.

– To be honest, Restaurant Day is bonkers. There’s no sense in the whole thing. Three friends are having a fun experiment and it becomes a worldwide phenomenon that is still being organised with only volunteers and no real budgets or resources, tells Timo Santala.

According to Santala, the greatest thing about Restaurant Day is that the people who make it happen are everyday citizens, ”nobody and anybody at the same time.”

One thing about Restaurant Day is that nobody has ever been asked for permission to organise it. Some of the things related to the food event would technically need different kinds of licences and some things are even illegal.

– The mayor of Helsinki, Pajunen, has said that we would never have been able to get the licences if we had applied for them. Now that we have done it and shown how Restaurant Day works, the city can’t stop us anymore, says Santala.

Links related to Restaurant Day:

• “The Timo Santala 'Restaurant Day ' interview”, Nordic Horizons 27 October 2014

• Timo Santala guests at the Heikelä Korporaatio show on Radio Rock 12 November 2013

• Ravintolapäivä - Tosielämän diili (The real deal’) 2013

Also the cover picture is by Timo Santala.