Waffle House

When traveling in the South one absolutely must visit local diners around breakfast time. Here I am in Canton, North Carolina. As a child I used to go to camp near here. I completely forgot about the smell, that awful smell, that fills the whole area from time to time because of the paper mill. En route to Charlotte to catch a plane back home to Tartu tomorrow, I couldn’t resist a short detour to Canton early this morning. And the awful smell made me want to eat at none other than—the Awful Waffle.

Waffle House is an American diner chain, especially popular among highway drivers. If you’re in a hurry, just go here because you already know what the food will be like. That’s why Americans eat at McDonald’s in Paris. You can only eat frog so many times on one trip, and you have four museums and two monuments to cover before dinner. “Tom’s a tickin,” as the locals say. In English, this means, “Time is ticking,” or you don’t have much time. And it does take time for virgin tourists to the South to get used to the accent, especially as it’s a different accent every couple hours on the Interstate.

Any breakfast diner is going to serve greasy food akin to what your doctor specifically tells you not to eat. But if you haven’t had a proper breakfast in years—at least, what I consider a proper breakfast, based on what I had in my childhood—it is simply amazing. I ordered the All-Star Special—a couple fried eggs, breakfast sausage, a waffle, biscuits and gravy and an extra of hashbrowns. Scattered, smothered and chunked, of course.

The breakfast sausage is an American specialty. That doesn’t mean it’s good, but I haven’t seen it anywhere else. The closest thing in Estonia is the raw sausage in lamb intestines. And it’s not that close. And the waffle is not the gigantic Belgian waffle (I heard there’s a place in Tartu that sells them now) but just a small, thin, griddled pancake. Not a crêpe, but a pancake. “Cake” implies that there is something magical in the batter that rises. Crêpes don’t rise, so the Estonian pannkook is an incorrect term.

Watching Americans eat pancakes and waffles is a bit sickening, if you pay attention to what they’re doing and think of the consequences. They are first fried in butter or oil (the pancakes and waffles, I mean), then smothered with more butter, then maple syrup is poured over them in large quantities. It reminds me of Billy Connolly’s rant about Americans eating food out of a bucket, in reference to a bucket of fried chicken or a bucket of popcorn at the movies. Barnyard animals eat out of buckets, he says. But damn, this waffle tasted good.

Biscuits and gravy is a Southern specialty. I make biscuits in Tartu as well—it’s very easy. The secret is buttermilk. Pett in Estonia is an excellent substitute, maybe even better than Southern-style buttermilk itself. I won’t describe what they’re like, but I’ll give you my recipe at the end of this review and you can try them for yourself. Meat-based gravy is optional. I prefer honey or jam.

Hashbrowns are an amazing dish. I don’t think it’s possible to make them in Estonia, unless you have a potato ricer—basically a large garlic press. You slice up the potatoes (or shred them) and they’re pressed in the ricer, to get all the extra starch and liquids out. When you cook the potatoes, they are nice and fluffy, not oily and soggy.

There is one item, only available in the South, called grits. Basically a coarsely ground corn meal porridge. You can make them in Estonia, but I can’t remember what grain to use, because I have never had a grit in my life. Grits are insanely popular in the South, but I just can’t bring myself to try something that is rumored to be an effective ant-killer. The rumor is that you can put dry grits around an anthill, they will eat them and as the meal expands, they burst. This in turn reminds me of the emergency room horror stories about little children who eat dry cat food.

I ordered a coffee for just over a buck. Eleven kroons is a dollar right now. Every time my coffee was only half full, the waitress—Christina—refilled my mug. “You want some mo’, suga’?” she asked in a raspy voice that suggested she had inhaled too much of North Carolina’s cash crop. “Yes, ma’am,” I politely replied. Ma’am. Southern for “madame”. I’ve always heard that you know you’re from the South if you need extra syllables for words like “dad” or “yes”. Day-ad, yay-es. Reminds me of the Saaremaalese õ.

I decided to try out my newfound accent. “Excuse me, may I ask a question?”
—Of cose!” she said with a broad smile, crow’s feet covered up with layers of makeup. Was her last name Baker by chance?
“Out of curiosity, would it be possible for me to sit here all day?”
—Umm, sho’, but you’d have ta ordo sumpthin.
“Don’t worry, Ah won’t sit here all day, Ah’m jist wonderin’,” I reassured here. She smiled even more, her teeth impossibly, unnaturally white, especially considering her supposed habit. “Ah’m doin’ sum research for mah writin’,” I added.
—Oh yeah? Whatcha’ writin’ ‘bout?
“Jist food, for back hoh-ome.”
—Where you from, honey?
“Where do you think Ah’m from?” I wanted to get some feedback on my accent.
—Charleston. Sumwheh neah the bea-each, she posited with confidence.
“Close. Ah live in Estonia.”
—Really? Is that neah Denmark? Mah ex-husband’s from there.
“Pritty close, yes ma’am,” I answered with a grin. Thing is, I already knew there was a village in South Carolina called Denmark, right next to another called Gastonia. And I thought Estonia was small.

I continued my conversation with Christina, and found that my cup of coffee was theoretically bottomless, but only half the coffee served in their diner was actually coffee. The rest was decaffeinated coffee, or decaf. A lot of Europeans, more often than not Estonians, can’t understand why the hell anyone would drink decaf. What’s the point, right? Well, some people actually like the flavor of coffee, but want to go to sleep at some point in the next week. Or maybe they can’t have too much caffeine, like me. I would drink coffee in Tartu’s cafés much more often if I could get decaf lattes, decaf espressos (hint, hint Tartu!).

My verbose and polite waitress started laughing when I asked her how much tap water cost. “Nuthin’ of cose! Who charges for watah?!” Estonia, I replied. So water, ketchup, coffee creamers, bread as various types of appetizer—all free. Everywhere. Free refills on coffee, Coke and so on.

“Could Ah have some more jam for my biscuits, please?” That was free, too. How could they give away everything for free, and the meal itself cost just seven bucks? I was stuffed! It’s because of buying in bulk. The more restaurants a chain has, the lower the unit cost. Simple economics. Apart from McDonald’s and Hessburger in Tartu, I can’t think of any restaurant chains. Maybe a pizza place. “Why is Estonia so expensive?” I frequently wonder. The inevitable reply is that it’s a small market. “But the European Union is the largest single market in the world,” I persist. I thought joining the EU was supposed to take care of the high prices in Estonia, that Estonia would no longer be a small market, but part of the largest in the world. I’ve never got an answer to that one. We still don’t have Ikea. Why?

I went to the cash register to pay my bill, and smelled the smoking section. For a seven-dollar meal and conversation, I left a three-dollar tip. Almost fifty percent! And it still wasn’t really that much. I walked back to my rental car, a Ford Taurus. My reservation was for an economy-size car, but when I landed, I didn’t like the car very much because I couldn’t sit in it without bumping my head on the roof, and I’m not that tall really. They bumped me up to full-size, no charge. I made the mistake of messing around with the Bluetooth feature on the radio with my cell phone. The result was that I couldn’t listen to anything but the radio. I can’t wait to get back to Estonia and hear boom-boom techno and eighties music. Anything but religious rock and round-the-clock prayer.

The world’s stereotype for Americans is that everyone is fat. On this trip, I did see a lot of overweight people, but nothing surprising for what I usually see in Estonia. What I did not see, however, were those truly obese people who are the frequent butts of jokes. Most of the people, to be perfectly honest, seemed fairly healthy, in good shape even. “Geez no, I never eat in Waffle House or Burger King,” is a common response. “I love Applebee’s.” Never been there myself.

Never had a grit, never eaten at Applebee’s, never liked religious rock. As I get older, I just want to stick to the things I know. Who cares about broadening your horizons, right? Everything’s fine the way it is, right? While there is not a single breakfast place in Tartu, you can get an inverted hamburger bun with cheese at McDonald’s, called McToast. Pass me some more bacon.

***

Buttermilk biscuits

two cups flour
one tablespoon baking powder
one tablespoon sugar
three-fourths teaspoon salt
one-half teaspoon baking soda
five tablespoons cold vegetable oil
one cup buttermilk (pett)

First, mix the dry ingredients well. Add the oil with a mixer to form coarse chunks of oil and flour. Add the buttermilk and stir with a fork just until there are no bits of dry ingredients, but be careful not to overmix. The chunks of oil are supposed to stay there. Place golfball-sized bits of batter about five centimeters apart on a baking sheet, and bake at two hundred twenty Celsius for about twelve to fifteen minutes. Great for sandwiches, too!

Maurice's Gourmet Barbeque

“Sure, I’ll be back in a couple weeks,” I told Mrs. Mingus when she asked me to go grocery shopping. I hopped on a plane and flew to the States. Shopping for food in Tartu can be a maddening experience. If you have a specific dinner in mind, you need specific ingredients. Which are all, for the most part, available in Tartu. If you can find them. There is not one grocery store that has ever had everything I need. They’re always out of one thing, or another item has been discontinued.

Grocery shopping always involves a trip to Rimi, then Selver to get the thing Rimi didn’t have, then Kaubamaja’s Food World to get the thing Selver didn’t have, and most recently Retroo cheese—so vital to my preparation of Mexican food, and found only in Food World—was no longer made, and I’d remembered a possible substitute available at the first shop I’d gone to—so back to Rimi. All that driving gets expensive.

After flying for hours I landed somewhere in the American South and rented a car for virtually no money. Driving was easy because of the spattering of snow and near-total lack of traffic. I drove for a couple hours and saw a curious billboard with a bunch of flying pigs, advertising a fast-food barbeque joint called Maurice’s. I decided to give it a try. It was a good decision. I bought what’s called the Big Joe Basket. Hush puppies (deep-fried and seasoned corn bread, essentially—a Southern specialty), fries and Coleslaw were the sides. Coleslaw is the American version of the omnipresent Estonian cabbage salad. Shredded cabbage dotted with traces of carrot and whatnot—whatnot is also a popular ingredient in the Estonian kitchen, usually in the form of a leftover ingredient that by itself is not large enough to constitute an actual dish. A small handful of raisins, a half-eaten apple. In the States it’s usually mayonnaise, at least in Coleslaw.

Let us not forget the sandwich itself. Barbequed pork, in this case “pulled” pork, where the meat is ripped off the carcass and shredded after spending all day cooking in a hole in the ground (a pit barbeque). Then it’s mixed with barbeque sauce. At Maurice’s BBQ, it’s a heavily mustard-based sauce—I’ve had this sauce before, as it’s sold across the country. It’s amazing on any meat, and would probably do wonders for the Estonian mystery meat burger as well.

It reminded me of something. I glanced at the wall covered in pigs flying in heaven. Why were they in heaven? Oh right, I was eating them. And then it hit me—America! It reminded me of America. That’s a new place opened in the Sõbra Keskus (Friend Center) in Tartu, by a guy apparently interested in, well, America. His previous restaurant went bust. It was called Rodeo Saloon. The owner is also interested in poisoning his customers, as his fries have the largest concentration of potato spice outside of the Narva Spice Mines themselves. But the “grillburger” (yet again the word “grill” apparently means “beef”) deserves special mention. It’s the largest hamburger in Tartu, and probably the best. I don’t know what sauce they put on it, but it is very similar to Maurice’s BBQ sauce. Mrs. Mingus and I actually had a fight over who got to eat the grillburger, because I made the mistake of ordering their kebob as well, for variety. So the Southern States have Maurice's Gourmet Barbeque, and Tartu has America's grillburger.

This Maurice guy—the owner of the flying pigs restaurant—seems to be an interesting character. One of those guys who is stuck in the details of the past, incapable of looking to the future. In the unlikely event of the South actually rising again—successfully this time—he would be called a Founding Father and a patriot, and money would be printed and songs written about this hugely fat old racist who flies the Confederate flag at his restaurants in lieu of the American flag, but who can also make a very good pork barbeque sandwich. But until that happens, I’ll just think of him as the brothel owner from the movie Porky’s.

All this shopping for food and pork got me thinking about something I’d recently heard from an American friend—I’ll call him Mr. World. It is extremely annoying to watch the Travel Channel with Mr. World because he keeps shouting out, “I’ve been there!” He pointed out some interesting reads on the food processing industry. What you’re about to read may sound alarmist, but that’s why I’m going to tell you.

Supposedly three-quarters of the ground beef products in America (the country, I mean) have connections to one single beef processing company. They take the leftovers—the half-eaten apples—from slaughterhouses across the country and make a paste the industry calls “pink slime”. This stuff is full of ammonia, to kill off pathogens. Fast-food companies, school cafeterias and a lot of other places buy their product, and sometimes as much as fifteen percent of the burger you’re eating contains pink slime. In America at least. But I somehow doubt the European Union is much better.

In the United States, and for the moment that includes the United Kingdom—an EU member—if you criticize the food industry, you can be sued, even if you’re right in what you say and can back it up with fact. This is due to “food libel laws”, evil evidence of the lack of real free speech in the Free World. Hippies unite, right?

There’s a lot of talk of going green, an eco lifestyle and diet. Of course that sounds attractive, and I always love the Lettuce Ladies. Can you name one person on this planet who would voluntarily, consciously choose to eat chemicals instead of fresh, organic foods free of pesticides and growth hormones and antibiotics and artificial flavorings and preservatives? Well, that’s probably an easy one, but I mean a person who is more intelligent than a fruit fly.

The problem is, there are a lot of people on our planet. Somewhere in the neighborhood of seven billion. On a side note, Estonians should keep that in mind when they get bitter about Kristiina winning a silver medal in this week’s Olympics. As Mr. World wisely pointed out, she competed against the best of the best of the best. Hell, we should all be proud of her just for being good enough to go race in Vancouver in the first place!

But seven billion screaming, hungry mouths. It is simply not possible to feed them all without industry. For the time being, we have to face the facts: the eco lifestyle is a fringe society, available only to a few people out of all those who live in the industrialized, modern world. I simply don’t have the time or the land to be a hunter-gatherer. If humanity all at once decided to boycott any foods tinged with industry, we would all die, be it from hunger or economic collapse—again resulting in hunger.

People might find the pink slime story disgusting, but that’s only because we’re talking about dead animals and guts. If you can silence your personal biases against the meat industry for a moment, I promise you the veggie industry is no better. It is, after all, organic matter we’re talking about. Any successful farm buys poison by the tank to spray on your food.

Modern food processing might not be sustainable in the long run, but a system of private, organic farms feeding everyone is even less sustainable. Think potato blight. Think of progress. We might not be anywhere close to harmony and success as a species, but we’re better off than just a few decades ago, when famine really was a reality for a majority of the world population. We need corrupt politicians, greedy bankers and racist sons-o-bitches just as much as we need informed citizens, hippies and in-your-face vegans and Lettuce Ladies to fight them. That is learning. That is progress. Even the authors of the Bible realized that. Perhaps these food libel laws are necessary to prevent a panic and ensuing collapse of industry. This makes me think of a run on the bank. Remember when, in Estonia, a currency exchange company spread rumors of the devaluation of the kroon, and made tons of money? Instead of everyone studying law and economics, maybe we need more food chemists? To help us move past this unattractive step in our social and technological evolution. In the meantime, I’m going to eat my chemicals. I don’t really have much of a choice anyhow.

I’ve been hospitalized in Estonia twice. And while I was impressed with the care I received, I could not understand why they were serving coffee to patients in the cardiac intensive care unit. I also could not eat the food served. I would say it was not unlike paper soup, but I’ve never had it, so I can’t be certain. As long as we live within the confines of economics, however, paper soup will remain on the menu.

It would be interesting to see what would happen in Estonia if a Postimees newspaper reporter decided to investigate where America’s beef comes from. The place at Friend Center, I mean. Would this reporter find the same stuff? Maybe blue, black and white slime instead? Would anyone even care? Maybe Estonia’s burgeoning beef industry would sue. I think an investigation of Tallegg may be more relevant, but again—would anyone care what the findings are?

A Swedish friend once told me about “public” cemeteries in his country. Due to limited land, low-income, one-time clients would be removed (and the land “resettled”) after ten years of residency. In the past decades though, that residency has increased to twenty-five years, because the corpses just don’t decay fast enough. This is evidence of the despicable, right? Here’s the thing—worldwide life expectancies are rising.

I grabbed a bottle of Maurice’s barbeque sauce to take home to Mrs. Mingus. First, however, I looked at the list of ingredients. I fail to understand the difference between “natural flavoring” and “natural flavors”, both listed. I suspect one of them might not be exactly as they are described. And this, I admit, is the one major thing I despise about the food industry: the law requires them to list all ingredients, but it seems to apply only to the “natural” ingredients, including naturally occurring sodium nitrate. Every single processed product I have ever seen has a bafflingly vague ingredient in the plural. The public only needs to be informed if it doesn’t expose a secret recipe? That’s hardly consistent, but I suppose the secret recipe is so important to protect the product’s consistency?

La Dolce Vita

“What are you making?” I asked my friend Kristjan in Tartu over a decade ago, having just arrived for dinner. “Chinese food,” he replied. In the tiny, cold kitchen of a Soviet-era panel building partially completed at the end of the eighties, my interest was piqued. I had been in Estonia just over two years and had yet to find chicken breast or brown rice in a grocery store. I leaned over the table occupying the majority of the floor to get a look at the greasy stove. I just smelled boiling egg noodles. A rather cheap steam clinging to the cushioned wallpaper.

Kristjan peeled back some of the tape insulating the window and tied a string to a nail so the window wouldn’t open too far. A gust of cold air immediately filled the room, steaming up the glass. He lit a cigarette. It smelled better than the egg noodles. He was preparing an instant package of noodles, like Ramen, and was about to add the spice mix from the little plastic pouch. I noticed a bottle of ketchup standing upside down on the table. I got nervous.

I’ve always found it unfortunate that the first emissary of a foreign cuisine is usually instant whatever. Low standards for what is considered good, or even acceptable, are de facto set by a mammoth food-processing factory in Holland. Plastic bags assembled in China. That’s about as Asian as it gets.

The same applies to a lot of the early Italian food available in Tartu. Reinu Pizza cornered the market early on with their twenty-four hour delivery of cold crust and cat food. Apparently Neill Blomkamp studied in Tartu University. I ordered one that night at Kristjan’s, by his recommendation. It was delivered only partially defrosted, and when I slid it out onto the pan, it fell upside down. The meat substitute that burned on impact never came out of the Teflon® (the oven was broken). I bought him a new pan the next day.

And Salvest, the Tartu-based cannery that supplies the whole country with jarred soup and authentic international sauces, introduced its still-popular Italian Sauce. Just add pasta and you’re whisked away to Naples. Go to their website and read the ingredients for their Thai, Chinese, Italian and Mexican sauces. Apart from one ingredient, the only difference between them is the name on the label.

It is with this mentality that Priit Rajalo, a beat reporter for the Postimees newspaper, marched in to the newly opened La Dolce Vita about eight or nine years ago to write a review. He wrote, “A dark-skinned English-speaking man came out of the kitchen and started asking customers if they enjoyed their meals.” This too piqued my interest, and the next day I tried out the new pizzeria for myself. When I walked in, my first thought was, “He’s not dark-skinned, you moron! He’s Italian!” In a country with more tanning salons than dental offices, I found this remark more than ignorant. If you take the average tint of Estonians who tan on a weekly basis and those who don’t, skin color here is easily a couple shades darker than your average Italian. And why did it matter, anyhow?

Incidentally, it’s a little-known fact that there is a huge vitamin-D deficiency in Estonia. Maybe that’s why tanning is so popular. But that’s like smoking so you can relax. Usually when one country is absolutely in love with a particular food that the rest of the world finds revolting (pultost in Norway, and seal excrement among the Canadian Inuit for example), that indicates some sort of vitamin deficiency. A lot of the food in Estonia is pickled or eaten with vinegar. I’m not entirely sure of how to interpret that though. The Italians eat a lot of pasta and ze French eat a lot of, well, anything.

Mr. Priit also complained that his pizza had hardly any toppings. Just tomato sauce and cheese. He failed to realize that he had ordered the Margherita, the most classic, simplest (and at La Dolce Vita, the cheapest) pizza around. Perhaps if he had not been so stingy, he would have enjoyed one of the many delicious pizzas I’ve come to love over the years. That’s what happens when you pay cheap and expect amazing.

That first week of business, I went three times. Except for the occasional trip to Tallinn, I hadn’t had a proper pizza for years. I couldn’t get enough. I dragged a couple farners there the third time, and after the third round of beer, when we ordered a fourth, Kristiina (it was her first waitressing job) began to make faces at us. When we ordered the brewskis, she actually asked, “More?!” in a hideously disapproving tone of voice. She wouldn’t serve us a fifth round—she flat out refused—so the dark-skinned man himself came out and had a couple beers with us. I vaguely remember him giving us a dessert pizza on the house.

La Dolce Vita has been one of the more popular restaurants in Tartu for years now. Set in the basement of a former police station on the corner of Gildi and Kompanii Streets, it has what I consider to be the best interior of any place to dine out in Tartu. Arched ceilings and windowsills big enough to be used as tables (and many customers do eat on the windowsills) make for a cozy dinner. I’ve always liked their jaans. At least the men’s. A photograph of Sophia Loren makes you sad when you’re finished. Conceptions of “beautiful” and “sexy” may change over time, but Sophia is the hottest septuagenarian alive. I wonder if there is a Godfather-era poster of Marlon Brando in the jaana.

The Capricciosa used to be my favorite pizza. My new favorite, for years now in fact, is the Diavola. It’s spicier than black pepper, so it’s more of a hit among farners. All pizzas are baked in a wood-heated oven, and sometimes you can see the chef on duty tossing the raw crust up in the air. The pasta dishes on the menu are also quite tasty, although from time to time there is an off night. My only complaint is that there seems to be somewhat of an abundance of salt, on a regular basis. Or maybe I personally tend to be more susceptible to salt, as I rarely cook with it. I want to live past fifty. Regardless, order plenty of water.

And top off your meal with some authentic Italian ice cream. Unlike most restaurants, you can choose your ice cream by looking at it first.

A couple of weeks ago I was simply exhausted. No way I was going to cook, and I didn’t have anything in the fridge either. No problem. We called La Dolce Vita and placed an order. I had to go pick it up myself, but the food was still warm at home. The waitress who rang me up at the register—Krista—for some reason did not recall that I had spoken with her a mere twenty minutes previously. She thought I wanted to order takeaway from the bar, and remarked that someone had just ordered precisely the same combination of menu items. “That was me,” I politely volunteered. There was a bit more confusion, but it worked out in the end. This was not the first time Krista had been confused about an order I had called in at La Dolce Vita.

I once asked the owners (there are two Italians) where they got their ingredients. “We import our tomatoes,” was the unexpected answer. Something about Italian tomatoes being better for Italian food. And while their ravioli is good, I somehow doubt they sit in the kitchen making it by hand. Especially as an order of ravioli comes out of the kitchen in just a few minutes. I haven’t seen similar stuff in the shop though, but so what? It’s good.

There’s a courtyard behind the building, accessible from Gildi Street or through the restaurant itself. The patio, open in summer, is always a nice place to grab a bite and a beer, or coffee. There’s hardly ever any direct sunlight there, due to the courtyardiness of the courtyard. The air is a few degrees cooler there, and the patio has an interesting wall made of firewood. Some of the logs jut out, flowerpots resting on them.

There is also a floor-to-ceiling window on one side, and it belongs to another property. I don’t know what is in there (an office maybe), but I clearly recall one summer day when my older daughter had just learned to walk. We kept our eyes on the only exit, and we failed to find anything she could cause trouble with, so we sort of relaxed our parental duties and left her to her own devices. Which turned out to be banging on this huge window, making the man inside who had been taking a siesta fairly irate with us. It was like interrupting performance art. There were no curtains, and he was sleeping on display to a café. Nothing to indicate it was his home. What kind of company has a bed in its office?

Unfortunately, these Italians are from Italy. They do make good pizza—no question about that—but they’re not from Chicago. The pizza of my heart’s desire has and always will be the upside-down, deep-dish, Chicago-style pizza. With what the Americans call Italian sausage, something that doesn’t actually exist in Italy. But that’s just my “premisconception”. It’s only natural that we all have them. And Ramen noodles, after all, are authentic Asian cuisine.

House of Mingus

Guest blogger: Kristopher, from Blue, Black and White Alert, reviews Mingus, the self-appointed restaurant reviewer, during a recent weekend visit.

__________________

"How about steak on Friday and couscous on Saturday?" Mingus asked me over Skype chat. "And I'm making an American apple pie."

I really wish more chefs would do that—coordinate menus in advance and ask if there are any dietary issues.

At the same time, there was also a hint of decorum and declaration. It reminded me of the time in 2007 when Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and his old lady outed each other to the magazine Oma Maitseand sent the editors a calligraphed menu/invitation to lunch at Ärma Manor.

There was no objection from me. The menu Mingus proposed/announced was his trinity of food as I understand it—1) he loves beef; 2) he bakes, bucking gender roles, at least in this country; and 3) couscous, well, that is a legendary Mingus meal. It all started in the communal kitchen in the dorm in France that housed Mingus in his university days. Mingus had been assigned to the African and American section and the place was full of heady intellectual ferment and l'esprit de banlieue.

Maybe because of his associations with Algerians and moonlighting as a sax player for a funk band on the Rhône, there's nothing snooty about Mingus, but otherwise he is a very European American. Today his otherwise conservative appearance is subverted by a few mild vices and practical jokes (none of which are food-related pranks, luckily).

**

Estonia was in the icy grip of a high-pressure system and our trip coincided with the two coldest days of the year. It was dark when our train pulled in to the city's northern terminal. Mingus was there to meet us. After a quick patdown by his handlers, we piled into his solid European vehicle and entered a warren of one-way streets in a wooden part of town. We passed by a villa with intricate trim, and I may have spied a manor, then we got to Mingus's 1930s building.

Mingus's kids were eating honey. I noticed this a number of times—they are always eating Estonian honey. But they eat it in a dainty manner, walking around the house with little spoons full of crystallized nectar, making it last and never getting it on any furniture. Remember this real good, I told my son, who gobbles sweets down like he's about to be cut off by his old man, which he probably is.

Mingus was making a Béarnaise sauce to go with the steak. As an exchange high school student in Sweden, I kept on running into the stuff, except in bastardized versions. As a result of these traumas, I associated Béarnaise with pork schnitzel in a pool of ghastly yellow tarragon-flavored melted shortening.

I had never messed with classic French sauces myself, beyond a basic roux or Béchamel. With good reason. The Béarnaise was a lengthy scientific process, involving a double boiler and a number of steps, some of which were pungent and others, irreversible. Why were the Swedes so fond of it? Come to think of it, what was Mingus, who by his own admission didn't care for Western European food that much, doing? Then I remembered how highly he prizes beef, and what is Béarnaise if not the classic pairing for steak?

"This is going to smell up the house," Mingus said. He was over the stove, reducing vinegar with tarragon and white pepper. I wafted cautiously. Sure enough, it was a little overpowering, but I wouldn't say bad.

I excused myself to the jaan, which was spacious, spotless, unisex, and also featured the thickest toilet paper I had ever seen. Double-ply would not describe it. Talk about luxurious. It was so luxurious that—I don't want this to seem weird—but I hoped that I could time things so I would get to use it before leaving.

When I got back, the Béarnaise was still in process, but there was a problem. It was close to -10 degrees F outside (-23 C) with near record-high atmospheric pressure. His pantry, uninsulated, hovered near freezing. Maybe because of this, or maybe not, food was behaving in mysterious ways. It had never done so before. It was not clear whether the eggs had curdled or the butter had not melted completely. Maybe both.

It didn't matter. There was a cardboard hogshead of wine (Chenet). And there was guacamole and pico de gallo de casa Mingus, which had been conjured into existence by Mrs. Mingus.

Now, that's not a pretentious way of saying that she "made" or "prepared" it, but that she probably magicked it to life. This is something you will notice about Mrs. Mingus, who is self-deprecating about her culinary talents. You never actually see her working in the kitchen but the kitchen stays in tip-top shape and good salads and side dishes materialize on a regular basis. Take the croutons for the salad, browned and covered in herbs. The pico de gallo was a Mr. Mingus recipe that involved radish, cucumber and piri-piri. I could have eaten a bowl of it like gazpacho.

As for the steak, it was good Estonian external fillet, in the narrow area of overlap where lean meets tender. It wasn't antrekoot with its sinews, that Mingus scornfully dismisses. Mingus had been to two stores to find external fillet. There was no question it would be a slam-dunk. In the end the Béarnaise was substituted for by Worcestershire. The steak was accompanied by frites. Some of the people at the table occasionally chewed with their mouths open but the food was hot and good. The Béarnaise had never mattered, not to me at least.

**

I am not an apple pie man, but I love me some good flaky or short-crust pastry. I've found it usually works out that way. There are some people who love the filling and others like the crust. Täpsustaksin: filling is just an excuse to eat crust, it's good if some filling gets on the crust, but otherwise it's not important.

I was surprised to learn that phyllo was not one of Mingus's favorites; but he has a foolproof recipe for a classic pastry crust that is probably healthier, too. After all, the key is to increase fat content and reduce water—that means none of those 70% butter spreads but only European 80%+ butters will suffice. Mingus has a cheat—he adds oil. As a result, the pastry also looked easy to work. He sliced the ball in half to make bottom and top crust and the texture of the cross-section was like food porn. By the time it went into the oven, the thing had an almost Norman Rockwell regularity about it.

**

Fifty-nine spice bottles line the shelves in Mingus's kitchen. The couscous involved several of them, chiefly fennel seed and cumin.

The bottles were made of slightly greenish glass as if they had been hand-blown. Mingus said that he had not been able to get any more than 59. And it wasn't enough. Spice number sixty-something—a recent acquisition—was a sealed plastic bag containing a kilogram of smoked paprika from an Israeli connection.

I remarked that similar glassware might be available at the Olde Hansa gift shop in Tallinn, but Mingus looked at me with about as much interest as if I had just said the A&O in Mõisaküla was having a sale on Tupperware. Of course he might have also been busy—if Mrs. Mingus uses magic, Mingus is a master methodician.

Mingus braised the chicken carefully for over an hour, letting it absorb the essential oils, then shredded it. Without having the authentic Moroccan preserved lemons on hand, somehow, by using some of the rind, and the right mix of spices, he was able to approximate the flavor. I would say that technically the couscous was a stew that was served over couscous. At least the time I ordered it at a restaurant in Morocco it all arrived in one dish. So in that sense, Mingus's dish reminded me more of the tajine cooked for us by our housekeeper in Essaouira, which was better than most restaurants in a country where much still revolves around the home.

Of course I'm partial to the whole continuum of North African and Middle Eastern flavors. And cumin for me is the king of spices, partly because it's so distinctive and powerful. An absolute ruler. It's impossible to argue with. As a result, I am not sure my review of anything with cumin can really be objective.

And then it was gone, like one of Baudelaire’s visions of seraphim, and I was too contented to think about much except maybe some more apple pie.

Burger Wars: Le Bus vs. City

Food culture is a function of cultural culture. But what is culture? One idea suggests it is the practice of traditions, these in turn being old ways of doing things, ways that are obsolete and bear little relevance to the modern world. Dressing up in old-fashioned costumes and singing and dancing every five years most certainly are culture—a very important example, too—but ultimately, it does not feed the homeless. Food culture is more indicative of what a society is like than the practice of culture itself, for it is practiced several times a day. The foods consumed in a metropolitan society reflect just how pedestrian that society really is. Thus food culture, following the logic above, means rejecting the new in preference of the old. The more foodly cultural you are, the less open-minded—and hence ignorant—you therefore appear to be. It means preferring Soviet-era mystery meat sauce over something like—oh I don’t know—green salad? This is a xenophobic paradox worthy of Zeno of Citium, right here on Tartu – City of Good Food.

This blog has previously mentioned how there are really only three fast food establishments available to the bar crowd—Alvi Kebob, McDonald’s, and the local gas station hotdogs—and that you should probably just stay where you are if you want to eat in hopes of warding off a hangover. In America, however (a very unfoodly cultural place, because so many different cuisines are so very popular), the afterparty munchies are extremely fickle because, well, they can be. My university town had a Tex-Mex place that offered “burritos as big as your head” for just a couple bucks. And they were that big. And that’s why we are too. But at least there’s a choice. The choice exists because people take advantage of it. Here, the market is less demanding, and that’s both good and bad for obvious reasons.

Before going ice-skating at Lõunakeskus (a mall) one evening, Mrs. Mingus and I spotted a bus parked up against a wall. Inside the mall. An honest-to-goodness bus, in working order. It served fast food. The selection was a bit odd: the first thing on the menu was a hamburger, and the second thing on the menu was also a hamburger. The difference was that in the second burger, you could get beef, but at Le Bus, “beef” is called “grill”. Or you could get a chicken patty instead. Well, if the second burger offers a choice of beef or chicken, what in the world was on the first burger?

And just this past week, I discovered a new joint called City, right downtown, by Barclay Square. The image of their cheeseburger looked so inviting, I just had to try it. The guy behind the counter—Kristjan—seemed to be the owner as well, not to mention stoned. I think he was stoned because I was a stranger, but he was very informal (yet still polite!) and humorous. He answered my questions. “Is the meat in the burger beef?” —Of course it’s beef. Have a look! And he picked up a tiny little thing out of the freezer. At first I thought he was going to try to play music from it in the restaurant’s compact disc player.

So welcome to Episode One of Burger Wars: A New Hope. Do these two new additions make Tartu and Tartites more or less foodly cultural? (Remember, “less” is actually good, by my logic.)

The battle begins. Le Bus is inside a Citroën, and that’s where the Frenchness ends. Definitely a good gimmick, an old gas-guzzler that’s about as healthy as the food it serves. I almost felt like I was outside, as the nearby ice rink adds a breath of something resembling fresh air. City starts out in a quiet corner of a newish building. Inside, it has the most typically, Westernly fast-food interior of all fast-food places in Tartu, except for McDonald’s, of course. The cool thing is the vaulted floor-to-ceiling window that goes out as you look up. Apart from the asphalt parking lot just outside, it somewhat resembles the top level of the ferry to Stockholm.

The help are polite in both places, if not a tad overly cultural in their behaviors. City charges you three kroons for ketchup, but it’s not in a tube as in other better-known establishments. It’s the cheapest ketchup available, with a sort of spiced flavor. Doesn’t really go well with anything, so don’t bother buying it.
“Out of curiosity,” I asked, “why do you charge for ketchup?”
—I don’t know, replied a new employee—Krista—who had just come from the back.
“Do you charge for salt, too?” I continued, eyeing the condiment tray.
—No, of course not.
“Why of course not?”
—Because it’s just salt.
“But this is just ketchup.”
—I don’t know.
“What about these coffee creamers? Are those free?”
—Yes.
“So I can just take some?”
—No, you have to buy a coffee.
“But I bought a hamburger, and fries.”
Just a shrug.
I continued with, “So it’s pretty certain that these creamers, individually packed, are more expensive per gram than the ketchup from this huge bottle, so why do I have to pay for it?”
—I don’t know. She was really smiling, out of embarrassment it seemed, so I gave up. She doesn’t own the place, or make the rules. I simply wanted to get some insider knowledge.
And then she squeezed out a tiny bit of red stuff into a plastic dish. “Could I have a little more, please?”
—Why?
“Because I have more than two French fries to eat.”
She gave me some more, and I didn’t have to pay for the extra amount, either.

Back at Le Bus, I also wanted ketchup. The burgers are served in little paper pockets, so I had no way of evenly ketchuping my sandwich—just piling it up on the front, drowning the meat, doesn’t cut it for me. I asked if they had anything they could put it on. Ironically, Krista worked here as well. She was moonlighting.
—I can put some on this coffee cup lid, if you want.
“But there’s a ventilation hole.”
—I’ll put it on this side.
“There’s a hole there, too.”
—But it’s smaller.
“I just wouldn’t want you to have to clean up my mess on the table when it leaks,” I timidly smiled.
—It won’t leak. You’ll see.
Now, the reason I made that comment about cleaning up my mess was because there were no serving trays available. I had to make the trip from the bus to the seating area four times to transport our meal, and I had laid out a tablecloth made of paper napkins. That’s a big, big minus, in my opinion. The tabletop wasn’t capable of sustaining visible life, but it wasn’t as clean as it could be. Now I understood why. But Krista was right—it didn’t leak through the little hole.

The food itself was mediocre. Well, no, that’s not fair. The hamburger at Le Bus was a decent size and tasted proper. It had real lettuce and tomato, not Chinese cabbage. Slightly pricey, but worth eating a second time if you happen to be in that particular mall. The same thing at City was a joke. The first time I ate their food, I stumbled upon it on the way to the grocery store. I thought it would be worth a try. It was so bad that I had to write about it, but that would involve actually going back there again and getting some photographs.

Although I will say the kebob was not nearly as bad. I am not sure, but I think it was beef as well. But there was no way in Helsinki I was going to eat that ridiculous burger again. Then something caught my eye: a baguette sandwich! Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am obsessed with finding baguettes in Tartu, without cheese or seeds or any other odd toppings. Just a plain old baguette. And here was one as a sandwich. I got the one with kebob meat. It was absolutely delicious, and gigantic, for just thirty-five kroons. This thing is the best buy in Tartu kroon for kroon. But be warned—while it’s wrapped in one piece of foil, it’s been cut in half. I opened it up and tried to lift it, but the “head” fell all over the tray, causing a royal French mess. And I was only served one napkin, and it was inside the foil! (I’m not sure if I’d have to pay for more napkins.) Fortunately, the jaan was right there. We sat a couple tables away though due to the arôme de vomi wafting from the antechamber. Unlike on the ski slopes while skiing in Otepää, you can’t take your camera in the jaan with you. That’s probably a good thing.

To get the salt and sauce off your hands at Le Bus, you have to walk over a hundred meters to the nearest jaan. But at least that jaan had the coolest, freakiest, most useful hand-dryer I’ve ever seen. The four-second dry. Amazing. Probably not very environmentally friendly though. I think it must have been powered by the generator in Le Bus.

As for sides, Le Bus had fried cheese sticks. People familiar with them know that they’re only as good as the accompanying sauce—in this case, ketchup again. At least it’s something new. City offers onion rings. I saw Krista counting out six. Not five or seven, but six.

Back to the bar-crowd comment at the beginning of this review. Le Bus obviously does not apply, but if you go out on a Friday or Saturday, it’s useful to know that City is open until six in the morning. You can also sit inside. It’s a good deal, if you think about it. It’s not a burrito as big as your head, but it’s a pile of tasty baguette and other stuff for almost the same price—almost the same size, too.

While there are some major downs to both contestants in this first battle of the Burger Wars, there are positive advantages to each as well. More choice and better quality have definitely made Tartu a less foodly cultured city to live in, and that’s a good thing. The winner is City by a nose—hopefully not in my baguette though.

Kuutse Tõnise Trahter

Alpine skiing! Or rather, downhill—I think that more accurately describes what is done on Kuutsemägi. Otherwise it would be called downmountain skiing. Just outside the ski capital of Estonia, a tiny village of two thousand called Otepää, the peak of this hill is two hundred seventeen meters. (According to the Estonian entry on the Wiki, it “might even be two hundred eighteen”. Wow!) However, the surrounding land is up to a hundred meters, so really it’s just a barely distinguishable blip on the horizon. But it’s there, it’s fun, it is possible to ski for half a minute straight if you’re very slow, and I respect Jamaica for even having a bobsledding team. Estonia’s a cross-country country, after all.

Nice modern roads will safely take you most of the way. The very end, however, is full of potholes that even through the thick snow and ice would make a Land Cruiser wince. The elite of Estonia come here, and they can’t fix the road? Kuutsemägi pretty much has a monopoly in their field, so I guess that explains it. In summer they have a tennis camp, for high-altitude training.

The parking lot was almost full, a sea of station wagons—Estonia’s pickup truck. The ticket office is at the bottom of the hill, where you drive in. Nice and quick, but the sign says farners have to pay in cash, and the owners misspelled that famous credit card on the sign—what’s it called? Oh, right. Mastrcard. I had to visit the booth twice because by the time I discovered the lift ticket wasn’t a sticker, I realized they’d also forgotten to give me a ticket wicket.

I borrowed a complete ski outfit from my partner-in-law (Mrs. Mingus’s sister’s partner), and when I tried it on at their home, it fit fine. In the rental lodge, however, I put the suspender straps on for the first time and they just seemed a bit short. I couldn’t go skiing looking like Steve Urkel. They were very difficult to adjust, and it took time. But the place was a zoo, and stinky too! I got a few dirty looks from people envying my seat.

To the slopes! You have to scan your lift ticket and glide through a turnstile before getting on the T-bars. A short minute and a half later and you’re at the top. I couldn’t help but overhear some guy blabbing on the public announcement system. Really loud, just going on and on about something, but I couldn’t understand him. He was very interested in hearing what he had to say. Very enthusiastic.

The last time I went downhill skiing was twelve years ago. It came back to me immediately, but just to be safe I went down the easy slope first. And there he was—the emcee from the speakers, standing in the middle of the slope, skiers desperately trying not to ram him. As I went by, he was saying something about how to stick your ticket in the scanner. “If the light turns green, go through.” Glad to know that. “If it’s red, something is wrong. Try again.” You think? “If it’s red when you scan it again, your ticket is locked for fifteen minutes.” What? Most people pay by the hour here for their right to ski. You lose a quarter of an hour for their problem?

Whoosh! And back in line again. People kept cutting in front of me, and standing on my skis from behind. My Estonian friend and I remarked that the same number of people in line would take up twice as much space in the West. People kept butting because I wasn’t standing on anyone’s skis. I had to be rude to get on the T-bar. And the snowboarders think they have their own line. They’re probably right of course—their wood is bigger.

“There’s not much of a line right now, good time for lunch,” MC Snow told me halfway up the hill. A few more times and I took his advice. On the way back down (the restaurant—Kuutse Tõnise Trahter—is on that same first slope) he was talking to the people on the slope outside the building. “Let’s give the skiers more room. If you’re not skiing, would you be so kind and move back to the edge of the slope,” he pleaded, all the while standing in the middle of the slope. And this guy just wouldn’t shut up. I didn’t hear him breathe once.

After taking my equipment off, I did the robot walk (walking in ski boots) and looked for a rack to leave my skis and poles on. Not a single one. I did find a sign, however, that instructed me not to leave my stuff unattended. So I clumsily went inside, wondering how I would carry skis and food. As it turns out, it wasn’t a problem. The lady emptying the trash rudely told me I couldn’t enter with skis. At a ski lodge. Where you can’t leave your skis anywhere. But I listened to her (don’t piss off the trash lady, is what I’ve always heard) and took a chance by depositing everything outside against the wall.

Back inside, quite the line. Damned emcee let the snow cat out of the lunch bag about there being no line. Fortunately, the line moves quickly, because they don’t actually cook anything in Kuutse Tõnise Trahter. Well, they do, but it’s made in bulk, cafeteria style. Fried Russian ravioli, fried pork, fried chicken filet (what’s a chicken filet?), French fries, and so on. No English, and that’s not a problem for me—I’m just warning anyone who might travel from France to go skiing on Kuutsemägi. I figured the pelmeenid (the ravioli stuff) and fries would be hearty enough for a day on the slopes. I could cough up the grease the next day while I writhed in pain from my numerous Charlie horses.

Of course the fries that Krista—the cafeteria woman—gave me were coated in potato seasoning. I liked that stuff the first few hundred times I had it, but it got old after a while. And I understand that Estonians love it with a passion—why else would it be used so much, right?—but it would be a very nice development were a choice available. What’s wrong with just plain old salt?

The Trahter, in my opinion, was the worst of the worst in terms of food. “But I like the food there,” a few friends have disagreed with my description. “Yeah, you’ll like anything if you’re hungry enough, especially after skiing for hours,” is my response. And those pelmeenid and fries were oh so good. Objectively: boring and unhealthy, but still delish! I especially loved the carbonated fizzle reaction in my throat from the Baltic-bottled Coke along with the grease. I wondered what my stomach would do on the black diamond slope a few minutes later.

Although I’m a farner, I could still pay with my Swedish bank-issued chip card.

Outside, my skis were still there. Loud techno was blaring from the speakers, and we couldn’t talk as we put our equipment back on. Then MC Snow must have seen that I was back. He turned the volume down (but not off) and started talking again. “Be boom! sure boom! to test-drive boom! the new boom! Toyota Corolla boom!” he competed with the music. Advertisements? On a ski slope? I scanned the other people to see if anyone stopped skiing to write down the telephone number he kept repeating.

The maps are a bit hard to find, which is odd considering there are only seven slopes. There is one just outside the restaurant, but not where you’d think to look. There’s another one at the top of the hill, but if you’ve made it that far I guess you don’t really need it. I was surprised at how much cross-country skiing was required to get from slope to slope though. The map didn’t show that bit.

It also didn’t show that there was another little food lodge on the top, far away from the beginner slopes. Cash only this time, for Estonians too. No Internet atop the hill? That’s hardly consistent—the ticket scanners must be plugged into something, and Estonia has Kõu, the wireless web modem. Internet anywhere. But they did have hamburgers—if only I’d known! Then I saw one, and had the sneaking suspicion it was not beef, but a chicken filet again. Another kind of chicken filet, not the authentic one in Kuutse Tõnise Trahter.

The black diamond slope on Kuutsemägi—the hardest on the hill—was very short and easy, and I’m not an especially good skier, either. It also had the only Poma lift there. I was mildly put off by the amount of ice chunks, however, so we went back to the easier stuff.

“Only three minutes left until the competition’s over. Hurry up!” MC Snow started talking again. A race? We made it to the line. Basically you just start skiing when he tells you to go, and your time will be announced as you pass.
“What’s your name?” the little boy asked, clipboard in hand.
—Mingus.
“How do you spell that?”

“GO!” pushing and shoving and leaning as far forward as my boots would allow, this contest was mine. I flew down the hill like a fire on the mountain, and when I passed MC Snow he didn’t say anything. My friend said it was because I wasn’t fast enough. Not fast enough to even find out how fast I was? Then he continued with his verbal diarrhea, and I realized I needed a jaan.

Inside the Trahter again, I saw a sign inside the stall that read, “Do not throw paper in the toilet.” And there was no trashcan. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what you would have to do in the event of an emergency. Hold the paper in your hand and ask the angry trash lady for help? I took a picture of the sign, but forgot to mute my phone. It made a loud camera sound, and a second later when I walked out of the stall, there was a guy washing his hands, looking at me like I was some sort of perv. I asked him, “Wanna’ see it?” And I pulled out the phone. Okay, no I didn’t say or do that, but I was tempted.

It was dark and we were tired, so we called it quits. On the way to my Estonian pickup truck, I noticed that the children’s slope—with a rope tow—was the only slope not illuminated by the green floodlights. Four-year-olds skiing in the dark with only the white of the snow to show them the way.

But overall it was a great day. The equipment was newish, clean and in very good condition. The slopes were short but fun. No Aspen, but you can’t expect that anyhow, outside of, well, Aspen. The lift tickets were a bit pricy at three hundred kroons for a day pass, considering that there are no chairlifts, but as I said, the owners have a monopoly. I want to go back next weekend, but I think I’ll bring my own lunch. Maybe Kuutse Tõnise Trahter will let me use their microwave?