Montreal in light | The meeting of two nordicities

Ina Niiniketo is a young Finnish chef who cut her teeth in well-known establishments in Stockholm and who has just opened her restaurant in Helsinki. She made the trip to Montreal for an ephemeral collaboration with the restaurant Ratafia, as part of Montreal in light. The Press followed her during her stay.

“We had to come to the other side of the world to find exactly the same temperature as at home! Ina Niiniketo laughs with her friend Roni Kerttula, who made the Helsinki-Montreal trip with her, watching the big snowflakes fall on Montreal, through the window of the Ratafia restaurant, Tuesday noon. The one who had never come to America is therefore not too destabilized by the winter temperature that prevails there.

She was also on familiar ground – at least, a little! – the day before, when she went to the Jean-Talon market in the company of Charlotte Maurin, Mia Robert, Héra Schneider and Magie Marier, a female quartet in the kitchens of Ratafia. Les Jardins sauvage, Marché des Saveurs, Chez Nino, Épices de cru: she enthusiastically visited the many kiosks, shopping according to her inspirations in anticipation of the four-course menu that was served as part of Montréal en lumière, Tuesday and last Wednesday.

“I was particularly impressed by everything Quebecers do with maple syrup! It’s next level! », remarks the one who opened her first restaurant in Helsinki last November with her lover, after several years spent in Stockholm where the couple notably worked with the renowned Swedish chef Mathias Dahlgren.

Canvas is located in a very small place with barely 20 seats, is only open at lunchtime, does not take reservations and serves creative and seasonal cuisine based on local products, with a reinvented menu. each day. In the evening, the restaurant is reserved for private events, and the menu is made in collaboration with customers. The couple do absolutely everything and have no employees – from Helsinki to Montreal, another point in common: the difficulty of recruiting restaurant workers.

No doubt, Ina Niiniketo seems to fuel creativity, according to her inspiration of the moment. “Ina and Roni are really relaxed! Normally, we work more with lists, but they are completely the opposite. It’s relaxing ! says Magie, dicing gravlax-style marinated apples in Menaud gin and juniper berries for the pre-dessert.

Flowers and berries

Each year, Montréal en lumière offers unique collaborations for its gastronomic component between some forty fine Montreal restaurants and chefs, sommeliers and winegrowers from here and elsewhere. In addition to giving rise to great encounters, these partnerships allow festival-goers to taste unique menus.

Opened in 2019, Ratafia first became known for its elegant and creative dessert menu, and has since integrated a whole savory component to its menu, in addition to working on a counter project where you can get its sweets to take away. Sandra Forcier, co-owner of Ratafia with her partner Jared Tuck, had been hoping for two years that her table would be selected by the event, the 24th edition of which ends on March 5.

The team was immediately won over when the organization offered them this collaboration with the young Finnish chef. “Ina sent us her ingredients, her ideas. His very flowery style is already similar to ours, it’s something we like, and we had great local suppliers to introduce him to,” remarks Magie Marier.

Already, during a meeting by videoconference to which The Press attended at the beginning of February, the ideas were going well: a tartare as an appetizer, with a red meat to be determined, a fish – a Canadian variety, Arctic char perhaps? – as a main course, a dessert with Nordic berries. Ina talks about edible flowers, mushrooms, “cloudberries” – the cloudberry, a small fruit common to both territories, but more difficult to find in Quebec.

One of the only cloudberry producers in Quebec who refused to sell his precious stock to Ratafia, the girls turned to haskap, a berry that Ina had never heard of, supplied by Racines Boréales. “Berries are a very important ingredient for us. I thought we had a lot of varieties in Finland, so I’m very happy to explore and work with this new berry,” adds the chef.

Ina would have liked to work a wild meat in tartare, but discovered with surprise that it was impossible in Quebec (only farmed meat can be served in restaurants). “At the Canvas, we almost always use wild meat. It’s more sustainable, because it’s meat that “grows” by itself in the forest, and not meat that is produced”, remarks the one who will soon publish a second cookbook on the theme of sustainability. . The first, Flowers on a Platewritten during the pandemic, was dedicated to one of his favorite products: edible flowers.

“I love floral flavors. When I was a child, I lived for a few years in Germany and my best friend was from Iran. It is a cuisine that uses flowers a lot, such as rose or orange blossom water. I don’t transform the ingredients a lot, I have a rather minimalist approach and I prefer to let them express themselves as they are, but I really like to play around with more punchy flavors. »

Green dukkah to accompany the Arctic char and its delicious white butter, a mixture of spruce shoots from Épices de cru with trumpet of death powder from Jardins Sauvages sprinkled on the beef tartare, Timut pepper to flavor the camerises… Here is an overview of what customers were able to taste at Ratafia this week as part of Montréal en lumière. A beautiful meeting around two nordicities with many hooked atoms!