Personally, my favorite item on
the table during the Big Night is blood sausage. Traditionally, it’s made of
blood. There are other traditional, local Estonian foods on the table as well,
for example mandarins.
But apart from the holiday stuff,
what is “Estonian food”? I found out recently, when I dined at a place in
Kadriorg, Tallinn, called Pincho. You see, Pincho is a tapas restaurant. And what
is tapas, you might ask? Essentially, it’s a form of Spanish cuisine, largely
consisting of snacks served in a bar. Lots of little things to eat and snack on
while enjoying a beer with friends. A tapas bar is kind of like the Spanish
equivalent of a sushi bar, in that you can choose a set with lots of variety.
Go to any city or village in
Spain, and you can more or less get a whole meal for just a few euros,
including the beer. In Pincho, however, the smallest choice of tapas on the
menu starts at over five euros. My girlfriend*** and I decided to order a set
with lots of variety, but it wasn’t easy. They had a cheese set, a meat set,
and so on, for two people, and it started at only 18 euros. We got the meat
set, as you can see in the image below.
Our waitress, Kristiina, assured
us that it was an excellent choice, and that yes, we would indeed have full
stomachs after eating it. And she was right—our stomachs were indeed full after
eating it, then going home and eating dinner. The tapas itself was excellent. A
true Spaniard could not have gone to the shop, bought imported sausage slices
and processed salsa any better than Pincho’s food-preparers did. And the way
they opened up those packages of deli meats and put them on the plate…fantástico!
Now how, you may ask, is this
Estonian food? The answer is simple: traditional Estonian food is now imported
and resold at astronomical prices. After snacking on dinner at the tapas bar, I
went straight to the nearest Selver grocery store (across the street) and found
all the ingredients we had been served. I added up the total price, then
divided it proportionally to how much we’d been served, and while it wasn’t 18
euros, it was pretty close, at only two euros. Pincho served the finest frozen frikadells.
The interior is fairly authentic,
I will admit, and the presentation of the food was mouth-aguaing. The owner
clearly knew what they were doing when they planned their menu, and while they
may not have ever been to Spain, they have clearly been to Finland, or Germany,
or some other completely unrelated place.
You might think I am being too
cynical about Pincho. Maybe I am. But I was hoping for something that was
actually cooked, or prepared there, when I ordered the meat set. Tapas is supposed
to have variety. Instead of a meat set, or a cheese set, have a set that has
elements of each in it. Some sausage is fine, maybe a bit of seafood, along
with that cheese. I want to taste a little of everything! That’s the whole
point of tapas! A table filled with samples from the full taste spectrum. And
while I can’t expect to pay Spanish prices for this would-be feast in Estonia,
I also don’t expect to pay 18 euros for a mere sample of this would-be feast in
Estonia. But that’s traditional Estonian food for you.
*Pig meat is of course “pork” in
English, but many menus directly translate the Estonian “sealiha”, if they even
indicate what meat it is. Many menus just offer “liha”, and this is fun,
because if you ask for specifics, Kristiina the waitress can’t just say it
comes from an animal, because “animal meat” (“loomaliha”) means “beef”, as
opposed to “taimeliha”, or “plant meat”. Apparently, meat doesn’t come only
from animals, in Estonian. Hence, my favorite question to ask someone in
Estonian: “Milline su lemmik loomaliha on?” While that question is asking what
your favorite type of animal meat is like, it could easily also be asking what
your pet cat tastes like.
**“Hapukapsas”, or as we say in
German in English, “sauerkraut”, is essentially rotten, fermented cabbage.
***I referred to her as “my
girlfriend” because neither of us are married, including to each other.
