At Helsinki’s Christmas market, porridge is boiling in the Tuomaa market.
Between two restaurants that sell porridge in the Tuomaa market, there is a grumbling about porridge, because the porridge called Teemu Aura the joulupuro sold by Patisserie Teemu Aura has been claimed to be suspiciously similar to last year’s hit porridge from N4kun’s pudding bar.
Cook Teemu Auran Christmas porridge contains rice porridge, cinnamon-kinuski, almond praline, browned butter and lingonberries. The developer of N4kun porridge is a chef Valtteri Sinkkonenwhose porridge, which was launched last year and received a lot of media attention, contains apple, miso kinuski, toasted butter, almond, cinnamon and red berries.
Sinkkonen says in Helsingin Sanomatthat the similarity between the portions of porridge is remarkable, and he does not believe that it is a coincidence.
– I don’t really have anything to comment on that. That product originated from our own products. It revolved around different options, from apple to cranberry. We ended up with cranberries because cranberries weren’t really available and apples would have been technically too difficult to implement. Otherwise, it has quite classic Christmas porridge elements, Aura commented to Iltalehte.
He says that he was not familiar with N4kun porridge before.
– I have not intentionally plagiarized anyone’s hit porridge. Of course, I understand that you can make a big deal out of it, but I can’t really comment on it.
On the left is N4kun’s hit porridge (€11.50), on the right is Teemu Aura’s Christmas porridge (€10.50). Liisa Lahti
The names of the porridge portions bring their own spice to the porridge soup. N4kun this year’s novelty porridge is named The Christmas porridge, while Aura’s porridge is called Teemu Aura’s the porridge.
– We didn’t know what N4ku called their porridge, and they didn’t know what we had it under. I can’t really say anything to that, Aura laughs.
Aura says that she also received hate mail on social media because of her Christmas porridge.
– I would not have thought that this would be such a big deal. I have three restaurants and my hands are full as hell all the time. It is not in my interests to plagiarize the previous year’s hit porridge of the opposite operator in Tuomaa’s market.