EXPO 2025: Do they make open sandwiches in Japan?

”We all need to eat!” as Sirið Stenberg, the Faroese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Industry and Trade, so rightly said as she and Ida Heimann Larsen, the Chief of Staff at the Nordic Council of Ministers, opened Nordic Food Day in the Nordic Pavilion at EXPO 2025 Osaka. In her speech, the minister praised the quality of Japanese food and drew attention to the New Nordic Food Manifesto, which has set the direction for food culture and sustainability for the last 20 years. Ida Heimann Larsen talked about the contribution Nordic co-operation on food makes to regional development and more sustainable food systems.

Norwegian tuna in sushi, Danish pork and Greenlandic prawns in ramen, mackerel from Iceland and the Faroe Islands, Finnish oatmeal and sweets from Sweden. The list of Nordic foods exported to Japan is long, and the companies attending EXPO 2025 hope to make it longer still. They also hope the Japanese food sector will adopt innovative Nordic sustainability initiatives. The media came out in force when the Danish company “Too Good To Go” launched on the Japanese market during the press conference in the Nordic Pavilion. Its product is as simple as it is good, and the app will soon give 123 million Japanese people the opportunity to buy surplus food at low prices – a simple but effective step towards reducing food waste.

Another highlight of the day was the presentation of Arctic Young Chef, a Nordic Atlantic Cooperation (NORA) project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers. It brings together young culinary talent from the whole Nordic region to create recipes that combine traditional flavours with modern techniques and local raw ingredients. The initiative provides young chefs with a platform to showcase their skills and contributes to regional development in the Nordic countries – and now perhaps also in Japan. At least, that is the goal of the three Arctic chefs, who made innovative dishes based on Arctic ingredients and Nordic traditions for the assembled Japanese media and food buyers at Nordic Food Day. It was a prime example of how gastronomy fosters cultural exchange and regional development.

The day after the EXPO event, the three chefs from the Arctic Young Chef programme – Gutti, Hinrik and Sebastian – visited the world-famous Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka. They introduced the Japanese chefs of the future to Arctic ingredients and Nordic traditions – in particular to the open sandwich.

Visiting the Tsuji Culinary Institute is a really special experience in itself. Over the years, some of the top chefs in the world have visited it, including Paul Bocuse – patron of the international competition Bocuse d’Or – who has repeatedly drawn inspiration from and contributed to Japanese cuisine.

The three young Nordic chefs wanted to follow in his footsteps: to swap experiences, start a dialogue and inspire the next generation of Japanese chefs to see what Arctic and Nordic ingredients have to offer.

Open sandwiches were new to the Japanese trainee chefs. Most of them dream of devoting their careers to Japanese and French cuisine, but maybe Nordic and Arctic traditions will now also find a place in their dreams. They ate all the sandwiches at any rate!