Estonia is a place I never thought I would make it to, but what a cute city Tallinn was. It was well preserved in its old-village-ness and everyone was so very nice.
When we first walked into the city, market stands and local shops lined the street. Shown below was one of the many flower shops we passed. Their arrangements were very beautiful and very reasonably priced.
In the main square were a few restaurants set up with small planters hanging from the railing of the restaurant space.
Most had curly kale, parsley, chives or other herbs, nasturtiums and other small flowers, and I even saw a few small individual squashes. I’m not sure if they were simply for display or if the restaurants actually used what was growing, but I thought this was a great use of space and interesting design for urban restaurant agriculture.
After walking around the city for a bit, we decided to stop for lunch and came across this local place.
The menus were really cool–they were written in the style of a newspaper with each quadrant in a different language.
The menu was mostly meat heavy and fairly simple but it all seemed to incorporate fresh and unique flavors.
This display was really interesting–each table had a solid block of wood that had the shape of utensils cut out of the top. There was space for salt and pepper and sugar too. This was just a unique design that I appreciated from this restaurant.
The beer in the background of the picture above and the first beers on the list in the picture below was a local beer and it was delicious. Flavorful, crisp, smooth, and tasty. It was nice to be able to try an Estonian beer.
For lunch we ordered an assorted pickle plate, an assorted meats plate, and an assorted seafood plate to split between Ari, my mom, and myself.
The pickles were homemade in house and were tasty, crunchy, very fresh, and very vinegary. They were paired with a side of mustard jelly sauce and a creamy sauce. I’m not sure exactly what was in the sauces but they were delicious, especially paired with the pickles.
This was the meat plate we ordered. It contained slices of salted lard, veal (baby calf) tongue, duck breast, and a meat paté. It was also served with a tomato and baby greens salad, a mushroom dill salad, bread, and more house pickles. I loved how fresh everything was and how they used a lot of natural ingredients.
I did try a little bit of each item and while some tastier than others, I’m comfortable with not eating all of this, especially some of the meats on my daily basis. The seafood though, I could eat that more often.
The waiter explained that these plates are very typical of what people would go out and order, like as an appetizer or late night food or so. So it was interesting to see the difference in common cultural foods. I think it’s important to note and I appreciate the absence of highly processed foods in a traditional plate. The food was very natural based, and I would be interested to look more into Estonia’s agricultural system and their food imports/exports.
The seafood plate was beautifully displayed. Containing fresh salted salmon, smoked herring, trout roe, herring roe, and a tuna cream served with rounded crackers. It was all so incredibly delicious and fresh, my mouth is watering now thinking about it.
This plate was also served with a tomato salad, slices of toast, and more house pickles!
Tallinn was a really welcoming city, from the people to the activities to the stores. I really enjoyed my time there and seeing the various ways to connect agriculture all the way over in Estonia.