Finland has come up with one of the more ambitious tourism pitches we've seen: the country will fly 16 international singles to Finland in February for 'Love At First Bite' — an elaborate blind group dinner date with locals, built around candlelit tasting menus cooked by Finnish celebrity chefs.
The singles get split between two dinners: one in Helsinki, the other in Tampere, a city in Finland's Lakeland region that doubles as the self-declared sauna capital of the world. The menus lean on distinctly Finnish ingredients — wild trout, reindeer, chanterelle mushrooms and sea buckthorn — and guests will dine alongside local single Finns. Expect the low-lit, long-eye-contact style of flirting Finns are apparently known for. Tampere guests may well find themselves steaming in a sauna with their fellow diners too.
It's a bold play for a country not exactly famous for romance. Nordic comedy duo Helgi and Erlend have built routines around the stereotype of the stoic, silent Finn, and the national concept of 'sisu' — gritty perseverance through hardship — isn't the stuff of love songs. But the campaign's logic has a certain charm: Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world nine years running, and that contentment is rooted in nature, the outdoors and a slower rhythm of life. There's something to be said for a partner with grit.
Finland also has form when it comes to unconventional dating. 'Sinkkukori', the viral phenomenon where singles carried pink shopping baskets in supermarkets to signal they were available, was a quieter version of the same idea. And with roughly two million saunas in a country of about five million people, intimacy comes built into the infrastructure — there are few faster routes to closeness than sharing a sauna, a plunge into a freezing lake, and a warming fire afterwards.
How to apply: record a short video answering one question — what would you cook for a dinner date, and why? Applications close on 10 November 2026 at 11:59 Finnish time. If your dish sounds appealing to the organisers, you may find yourself at a candlelit table in Helsinki or Tampere a few months later, very possibly across from someone who also lives for wild-caught salmon over an open flame.
Even if you don't get picked, the campaign is a decent prompt for a winter trip: Helsinki's food scene is having a moment, and Tampere makes an easy base for the lakes, forests and sauna culture of Finnish Lakeland.
Story via Condé Nast Traveler.
