With walls draped in white cloth that lead to a grand, candlelit dining hall, you’d be forgiven, firstly, for worrying you’d accidently stumbled onto the set of a Beowulf film adaptation, and secondly for thinking the tidy, wooden cottage front that acts as the entrance to VisitSweden’s latest publicity campaign was some kind of Scandinavian Tardis. Housed in the Truman Brewery, just off Brick Lane, the three-day long, pop-up event, ‘The Red Cottage’, is aimed squarely at potential visitor’s bellies, offering taster lunch menus inspired by the cuisine of its culinary diverse home nation.

From almond potatoes, to reindeer steak to arctic crayfish, Sweden’s ever forward-thinking tourism board realises that there are more effective and interactive ways to promote its brand than photographs of Nordic fishing villages. By offering the ‘Swedish experience’ in (literally and figuratively) bite-sized portions, The Red Cottage is going one step further than simply informing consumers of Sweden’s rich, culinary culture, instead giving them a direct, tantalising taste of it.