Ten Tips for Good Retro Dining
Text Timo Raussi Photo Visit Estonia / Puhu-Risti Söögimaja
Do you prefer unpretentious, reasonably priced, filling, and home-style food to fine dining experiences, even when travelling? Malle Kolnes, who is responsible for relations with Finnish tour operators at Visit Estonia, has compiled a list of ten kohvik, or cafés, inns, bistros and söökla, or lunch cafeterias, whose interiors may be retro, but where the service is friendly even across language barriers, and the flavours seem to come straight from grandma’s kitchen.
Located 30 kilometres south of Viljandi, in a region famous for mulgipuder, Halliste söökla is a lunch cafeteria that has even made it onto Estonian TV news. Although the local speciality of Mulgimaa does not appear on the everyday menu, soups and several main-course options are prepared in pots and pans every day, such as baked salmon or chanterelle and bacon sauce.
When driving from Tallinn towards Narva, you can enjoy a retro-style meal at Viitna Inn, known in Estonian as a kõrts, which is one of the oldest establishments of its kind in Estonia, and whose menu also includes mulgipuder! The place serves travellers all year round near the main road. Located along Rägavere Road, which leads from central Rakvere towards Lake Peipus, Anne juures söögituba has received an excellent Google rating of 4.8 from what seems like a statistically respectable jury of 320 customers. Perhaps the praise has come from customers and staff of the building supplies shop next door, but at least in the photos the lunch portions look seriously substantial.
One of the destinations for retro fans when driving towards Tartu is probably the Järva-Jaani Vintage Technology Shelter. Nearby, next to the village church on Pikk Street, food is prepared in a former chaplain’s house, not by a chef named Jaan but by Riio Põldmaa, who learned his culinary skills in Norway. His Jaani Tare Inn serves customers from Wednesday to Saturday until early evening.
In Põltsamaa, at the junction with the Tallinn-Tartu main road, Puhu-Risti Söögimaja has also made it onto Estonian TV news, when the subject was filling food that costs less than restaurant meals in the capital. The interior creates a nostalgic atmosphere, as does the daily changing menu, handwritten on a whiteboard, which is, incidentally, almost breath-takingly extensive! A handwritten menu also awaits visitors at Urve’s Café–Restaurant, or kohvik, on Puiestee Street in Tartu. Here, carrot and meat pastries as well as sweet buns for coffee are also baked by hand. During the harvest season, homemade jams and marinades are sometimes available for sale.
In Pärnu, anyone looking for a budget-friendly lunch spot should follow Malle’s advice and head to Männi Café or Kännu Café. At the former, the main course costs €5.70 at lunchtime and lunch soup at just over three euros. At Kännu, a family business established as early as 1995, prices are much the same, with a meatier main course costing only about a euro more. Both are open seven days a week from the morning until 21:00.
The final “tips for the thrifty” take us this time to the west coast and Haapsalu. Nurme Bistroo says on its website that “it is easy to come to us and easy to be with us”. The unpretentious lunch menu is available until 15:00, but as a special feature, the place opens as early as 8:00, making it suitable for breakfast too. Opening its doors an hour earlier is Teele Pagar, for a perfectly understandable reason: it is a bakery–café whose bakers arrive to get their yeast dough rising well before the rooster crows. And as the name kohvik in Estonia almost invariably indicates, you can also enjoy a full lunch at Teele.
So, do you need a Michelin star for good food? We certainly don’t think so—attitude is what matters! Head isu!
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