Foraging with Porsche in Finnish Lapland
A culinary adventure with the Taycan Cross Turismo, a roof tent and top chef, Rosa Tapola
Man and woman loading Porsche with roof tent
In winter, Levi in Finland is a buzzing winter sports resort. In summer, it’s a place to camp out in beautiful countryside. With a Taycan Cross Turismo for company, time to head foraging and wild cooking
The Lapland region of northern Finland is many things. It’s crisp and cold with deep snow in winter, and magnificently green in 100 different shades during summer. On the one hand illuminated by the midnight sun, on the other made magical by the unreal glow of the northern lights. Just a few kilometres from the Porsche Ice Experience at Levi – a town which also acts as a winter sports mecca – lies the spectacular Northern Lights Ranch. Since it’s 170 km north of the Arctic Circle here, it never gets dark in midsummer. By contrast, in the winter a mysterious twilight pervades. A place of magic. And it’s where Rosa Tapola, Executive Chef at the ranch, goes to work creating food – crafting exquisite dishes for hotel guests and visitors alike, including those from the Porsche Ice Experience.Northern Lights Ranch – where Porsche Ice Experience guests dineOn a visit to see Rosa, we have a Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo to help carry us through the wilderness, making serene progress that fits with our surroundings. Rosa promises that there will be a lot in store for us. Here, in Lapland’s eternal forests, she heads out into nature to collect the berries, mushrooms and herbs for the dishes she serves up in the winter. Summer is relatively brief up here, so Rosa makes the most of her time cooking, making jams and freeze-drying the tastes of Finnish Lapland at this time of year.
Woman with dog gathering mushrooms and herbs in Finnish countryside
Chef Rosa Tapola roams the Finnish forests on her regular foraging trips, her eyes sharpened in search of the hidden treasures of nature Photo: Porsche/Elina Manninen
Many guests of the Porsche Ice Experience spend an unforgettable evening in the restaurant of the Northern Lights Ranch, where in the depths of winter they can enjoy ingredients that have been gathered in the summer months exclusively for this unique restaurant.Foraging for food on a Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo road tripWe stop at a small lake – something you will never want for in Finland, with over 180,000 of them dotted across the country. There aren’t many places left in Europe that can claim to be true wilderness, but this is one of them. Rosa says that she considers it an honour to be able to use the gifts offered up by nature here. She’s been working at the Northern Lights Ranch for two years now – and her dishes pay tribute to the region’s culinary traditions. They’re presented as seasonal, regional and sustainable, but come with a contemporary twist, prepared in a way that allows her past in Helsinki’s Michelin-starred restaurants to shine through.
Hands holding basket of ingredients from a Finnish forest
Amid the moss, birch trees and silence, Rosa collects extraordinary aromas – from wild crowberries to rare lichens, all giving her dishes an unmistakable depth Photo: Porsche/Elina Manninen
She takes a basket in one hand and the lead for her striking, pure white dog, Nilla, in the other. Then they both disappear into the undergrowth. We follow, still a little uncertain, into the captivating Finnish woodland. The silence is broken only by our own footsteps and the occasional call of a bird. Rosa scans the ground carefully, gathering mushrooms that we would have otherwise blithely passed by. “For me, it’s a kind of meditation,” she says as we stroll along a dark, shimmering lake. “I can get absorbed in picking for hours and don’t even notice the time passing. At some point I snap back to reality – and then sometimes I don’t even know where I am.” For Rosa, it’s her take on Zen – pure meditation. She lived in Helsinki, the Finnish capital – located several hours’ drive to the south – for several years. Here, she attended a culinary school, then went travelling, working in the kitchens of restaurants in France, before heading to Melbourne, Australia, and then heading back home to Helsinki. But soon it was time to escape the hustle and bustle for a more sedate existence in Lapland.
Woman with Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo in Finnish forest
Rosa chose to swap the big city for the unspoilt simplicity of nature and a whole new way of life Photo: Porsche/Elina Manninen
We walk through wild blueberry bushes that seem to go on forever. Plenty of berries are popped into Rosa’s rapidly-filling basket. She points to a plant that bears small, knobbly fruit with a delicate orange colour, informing us that they are cloudberries. These magically puffed clouds have a taste that’s not too sweet, with a pleasant bitter note. “The season will be over again in a few days,” she says with a sigh, suggesting that we pop a few more of them in our mouths now, which we do so with a simple, childlike joy.Experiencing calm on a Taycan Cross Turismo driveBack in the Taycan Cross Turismo, we drive on. The day has a completely different dynamic when you don’t have to stick to standard working hours. Our Taycan hums through Lapland’s vast expanse in near silence. The road runs straight ahead – in the distance its forest, forest and more forest. Every now and then, reindeer cross the road. They stare at us like the intruders we are up here in their land.
Two people cooking on barbecue next to a lake
Beside a Finnish lake, Rosa gets to work preparing a meal using ingredients gathered in the surrounding forests Photo: Porsche/Elina Manninen
It's August so it’s still not dark in Lapland. The sun is hovering in the sky even at 11pm, bathing the landscape in an unreal, otherworldly light. With a Porsche roof tent installed on the roof of the Taycan Cross Turismo, thoughts turn to looking for a suitable place to stop and rest for the night. First, we find the perfect place for dinner. At midnight, Rosa prepares a feast over an open fire. On a small peninsula by a lake, she fries potato bread in the pan, serving it with a wonderfully intense nettle pesto. There are also mushrooms that we picked that day cooked in the embers as well as sweet pancakes with fresh cloudberries for dessert. It’s difficult to think that anything could taste better at this moment in time.
Potato bread with nettle pesto presented on a rustic plate
From many of the items that she has foraged in the forest, Rosa serves up flavours that taste of summer in Lapland Photo: Porsche/Elina Manninen
How a Porsche roof tent becomes a spectacular room with a viewIt’s still not dark when we carefully manoeuvre the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo over gnarled tree roots until we find the perfect spot to spend for the night – sheltered, but still with a view. The Porsche roof tent can be set up in just a few simple steps.The night is short. The mattress in the roof tent is comfortable and the soothing sounds of the surrounding woods are sleep-inducing in the best sense of the word. In the morning it’s time for a short dip in a still ice-cold lake. Nothing wakes you up quite like that. There is still adventure to be had in our Taycan Cross Turismo. Who would want a lie-in? The endless road – and daylight – awaits us yet again.
Consumption and emission information Taycan 4 Cross Turismo (WLTP): Electric energy consumption combined: 22.0 – 18.7 kWh/100 km; CO₂ emissions combined: 0 g/km; CO₂ class: A.
Continue reading
Woman leaning through window of Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid Coupé
What is great design? Design with soul is at the heart of Marietta Kiesling’s philosophy. And her Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid Coupé embodies that – a car where every detail has a purpose and is infused with timelessness Read more
Porsche 911 Dakar on snowy track in Finland
911 Dakar vs Olympic ski champ challenge – who wins? In one corner, it’s Aksel Lund Svindal, an Olympic ski champion. The other? Race driver and Porsche Ice Experience instructor, Jukka Honkavuori, in a 911 Dakar. Watch what happens as they go head-to-head Read more
Man on ladder with grey Porsche Macan with roof tent
Spot On: how to use and install the Porsche roof tent Watch a video on how to mount, open, stow away and demount the Porsche roof tent, ready for your next adventure Read more
Related topics