YamYam

As mentioned before, the guy who owns Café Truffe also opened a “gourmet fast-food kiosk” behind Club Tallinn, in Tartu, on Narva Street. It’s called YamYam. And it’s pretty good, fast and cheap. Not so cheap if you compare the quantities with other places though. Gram for gram the prices are average.

Where else could you get sushi in Tartu in less than three minutes? Not sushi technically, but maki. YamYam has a good selection too, especially considering its kioskness. I’d like to be perfectly honest though—I love sushi, but it all tastes the same to me. Sushi, maki, tuna, salmon, cucumber, cream cheese and so on—regardless of what it has in it, it tastes the exact same on my tongue. I am only able to notice subtle differences in ingredients like soy sauce, sugar and rice vinegar in the sushi rice, wasabi and gari. I might only notice a difference if you served it with raw buffalo liver.

The other Asian foods—stir-fried rice or noodles basically—are also decent, but nothing special in the end. Estonian restaurants tend to offer thick, gooey sauces that ultimately are a bit sweet for my taste buds, and claim they are Chinese. I’ve never been to China or Indonesia, but there are enough authentic (albeit “localized”) Asian places in the States to lead me to believe that Estonian Chinese is really some sort of Indonesian creation. Which makes sense because Tsink Plekk Pang, the first Asian restaurant in Tartu as far as I know, has Indonesian cooks. It’s not bad at all, but it’s not Chinese either.

Some other items I’ve ordered on my two visits: the Caesar salad wrap, the chicken kebob wrap (I couldn’t really tell the difference between the two, but at twenty-five kroons or so each they were still good), fish and chips for the kids, and of course the hamburger. The woman at the window—Kristiina—couldn’t immediately confirm that the meat inside was in fact beef, but there were two small patties overlapping, resulting in large swathes of delicious hamburger minus the burger. Eating this reminded me of a high school girlfriend who one day turned vegetarian. Not quite knowing what to eat exactly on her new diet, she once ordered a Philly cheesesteak sandwich and asked the waiter to hold the steak.

The fish was delicious, the three or four small pieces in the order. But the chips—fries in American—were absolutely horrible. HORRIBLE. YamYam has brought Estonian frying to a new low. It’s not so much that these chips were greasy, but soggy. Both times they’ve been included in an order, on different visits. They were also smothered in potato spice. I can’t understand why this stuff is everywhere. Estonians can’t seem to get enough of it. Whenever I ask for the kitchen to hold the spice, I’m met with looks of disbelief. “How can you not just adore Santa Maria’s potato spice?!” Because as strange and foreign as I may be here, I’m quite content with salt, and salt alone.

When I eat something, I usually eat it for the natural taste that comes with it. If I don’t like the real flavor, I won’t want to eat it with all manner of perfume for the mouth either. Bacon, cheese or dill flavoring isn’t going to change the fact that I just don’t like a certain food. Which leads me to believe that Estonians, for all the potatoes they consume, don’t actually like potatoes.

The main problem I’ve had at YamYam is the other customers. The staff have been extremely polite, willing to answer any questions I have. When I asked Kristiina, for example, what the Chinese in their logo meant, she eagerly asked the cook, who of course didn’t know. But instead of giving me the typical “Ei tea” (dunno), she suggested that it might mean “greetings” or something or other. I conjured up images of an English restaurant with English cuisine opening in a place where literally no one spoke English, and the logo had some gold-toothed chav and the word “Hi” boldly printed on his Burberry hat.

But the clientele problem is largely due to the location. Yeah, you make money, but you get a ton of teenagers whom I suspect of consuming something a bit stronger than beer and cigarettes, coming out of Club Tallinn. The first time I went there was after a late showing at the movies with a friend who got the midnight munchies. The kids standing outside in the road didn’t want to move so I could drive up to the kiosk. As the food was on its way, I took a good, hard look at today’s youth. A massive, six-foot-plus neo-Nazi in a bomber jacket speaking Russian (which always confuses me—didn’t Hitler hate Slavs?), mid-pubescent girls scarcely clad in pantyhose and some guy named Priit who kept going around the corner to pee.

Mrs. Mingus and I went there one sparkly afternoon, and while we were looking at the large menu mounted on the wall, a group of kids pulled up, got out, and stood directly in front of us, blocking our view. One of them felt the urge to hock a loogey and it almost landed on my foot. Sometimes I just can’t get over how rude people are. They say that lack of respect comes from the parents. And these parents got it from their parents. But I’ve seen these grandparents—very nice people who have lived through great hardship. What gives? It’s something that’s happened very suddenly, most likely due to one main cause and several contributing factors. What could they be? It’s not poverty. I’ve been in some truly destitute places and the people are amazingly hospitable. No, there’s another force at work here.

Potatoes and milk can supposedly provide all the nutrients a person needs to be healthy. The only problem is that most of the good parts of starchy spuds are in the skin. Estonians don’t eat the skin—the best part, in my opinion. It would even help if you boiled the potato and then peeled it. So Estonians are in fact consuming pure starch and carbohydrates—calories—with very few vitamins. I postulate that if you were to take away all potato products in the country, or at least teach people to eat the skin, a very large part of the rudeness would just go away. And the coming obesity epidemic. Why eat something if you don’t like it?

Anyhow, YamYam is a good place for a light dinner or snack. It won’t break your bank, but it won’t fill you up either. I don’t know if I’d call it gourmet though.

Big Ben Pub

Sunday brunch is a popular tradition among many North Americans. It is somewhat associated with grandparents for many—I have lots of childhood memories of sitting through an agonizingly long church sermon and then being further bored in a hotel restaurant, watching Grandfather Mingus extending his tongue to meet the approaching food on the fork. I also recall playing with lava stones used as mulch below plastic seventies-style plants while a guy in a tux tapped away on a piano on the patio.

Not that I’m old enough for my turn in this pseudo-stereotype, but Mrs. Mingus and I decided to go for a Sunday brunch last weekend, minus the church bit of course. We searched on line for a place to go—hotels are always a sure thing—and we found that Eesti Restoran (Estonian Restaurant, a uniquely named eatery in the Barclay Hotel) offered an all-you-can-eat buffet for just a hundred kroons or so, and it was available to the public until eleven. We arrived an hour and a half before that, and it was already over.

So we footed it to Entri, under the Hotell London (Hotel London, in English). The food looked alright, but it was a hundred and twenty a head, and they wanted fifty for each of our two kids as well. They might eat a piece of ham, spit part of it out, and then that would be their meal. No price reduction either. We moved on.

Another hotel had a promising spread but the doorman firmly suggested that it was typically reserved for their hotel guest, who apparently wasn’t awake yet. The dining room was empty and they were turning away customers, in this economic climate. None of the other restaurants were open yet, except for Suudlevad Tudengid, which I’ve reviewed before. Their breakfast menu consisted of a plate for forty kroons that—according to the menu—had an egg, a pickle, beans (I saw a customer who’d ordered it, and they were just raw, cold kidney beans, not the normal baked beans you’d expect) and a piece of dry toast.

—A side note on Suudlevad Tudengid, if you will (Kissing Students). Their chef must have changed. Mrs. Mingus has eaten a couple of their lunch specials, which used to be very good. Last week they served her a fish tail and a pile of mayonnaise. She gave it the benefit of the doubt and tried it again the next day. Another fish tail. We’ll not eat there again.—

Eventually, on the way home, we saw that Big Ben Pub on Riia Street, in the Hotell Pallas (Hotel Pallas, in English), offered a buffet, at half-past ten. They charged a hundred kroons about, and I asked how much it would be for the kids. Nothing! The waitress, whose worn name tag said, “Kri tiina,” told us not to worry about it.

Now I wouldn’t expect the overly developed, sumptuous selection of a large, American hotel, but I also wouldn’t settle for the boxed and processed products at a small American motel, either. Big Ben boasted a healthy combination of both. Scrambled eggs with ham mixed in, fried potatoes with ham mixed in, crêpes rolled up with some ham mixed in, and crêpes rolled up with some tuna mixed in. Small sandwich choice, cereals, coffee and juice, wieners and frozen meatballs for kids, and ketchup.

It wasn’t the best I’d had, but it was far from the other end of the spectrum. Just the fact that they didn’t charge for the kids makes me think very positively about it. But the food was relatively good, despite the abundance of pork. There was also a lot of fish, not just the tuna crêpes. That’s pretty typical of Estonia, just to prepare any bacon-hunting Canadians or Americans.

I like the place itself—the décor, I mean. It’s a theme pub, fashioned after London. I guess the owner’s not simply some fat guy called Ben. But there are leather seats, highly ornate wallpaper true to British interior fashion, lots of wood, and the toilets even have hot and cold taps! The men’s jaan also has an extra feature.

After washing my hands, I couldn’t help but notice the thickly padded leather cushions mounted on the wall over the urinals. Right at head level. Makes you just want to lean against the wall while you’re there. Then I noticed what it was for, on the opposite wall. The decorator apparently visited some vintage porn shops in Camden. I asked Mrs. Mingus if there was anything unusual in the ladies’ jaan. “Like what?” she asked. I told her nevermind. Too difficult to explain.

This wasn’t the first time I’d eaten in Big Ben. No, that was a few months ago. I got the hamburger because that is what we Yankees eat. That’s all we eat. I did ask if the burger was real beef. The waitress had to ask the kitchen, but yes, it was real beef. And it was surprisingly the best burger I’ve had in Tartu, if not Estonia. Now still, that doesn’t say much, but it had thinly-sliced red onion, a great sauce and even lettuce. I don’t think it was made from scratch in the kitchen though. The patty I mean. Most likely bought pre-sliced and frozen.



A distinctive feature of Big Ben is its patio, or veranda, or rotunda, or whatever you call the large, protruding glassed-in deck suspended over a single load-bearing steel post. It’s pretty cool, but I think it’s been de facto reduced to the largest smoking room in the country. They keep most of the windows closed, so even though it’s outside, it still stinks of cigarette butts. While checking it out, I also got my daily fix of Michael Jackson.

I went back to the table and called the bar to order a drink. Literally. Picked up the phone on the table and placed my order. I could see Kri tiina talking to me, receiver in hand. I left a tip, even though it was a self-serve buffet. This place has gimmicks, and they work.

Opera Pizza

Not many restaurants from the nineties are still around in Tartu. Most of them have either gone out of business or been demolished. Not because they were that bad, mind you, but progress is a powerful incentive for demolition. A place barely squeaks by, and when the shack is knocked down for, say, the newish Kaubamaja department store, it’s not worth the trouble to relocate. (I’m thinking of Toidu Torn, of course—Food Tower—the place that served the typical Estonian “meat” burger and dished out ketchup-and-mayo sauce from an open vat on the floor.) But there are two shining relics still on the scene, ironically both pizzerias. One is Taverna; the other is Opera Pizza. Or is it Pizza Opera? I’m not really sure.

When I first got here back in the late nineties, I asked repeatedly where I could get a good pizza. And I would always get three answers. The third was Pronto Pizza. Or was it Pizza Pronto? I’m not really sure. After having a daily special though, with egg and corn, I decided there were only two places to go for pizza, not three.

I’ve had pizzas all over Europe, and each country of course has its preferences for what is popular. French pizzas are surprisingly good, usually with one or four (not three or five) olives strategically placed at the center or the four axes. Italian pizzas for my tastes are a bit thin on the toppings. And obviously I am a big fan of American pizzas. Deep dish is one of my favorites, something the Estonians quite often offer but fail to accomplish (the secret is corn meal, guys!). And the best topping is sausage. I don’t mean the sliced sausage links, more akin to hot dogs, that are popular here, but what is for some reason called Italian sausage, and broken up into shapeless chunks. It has fennel in it. Ah, fennel. The best spice in the world. The Estonian name, pharmacy dill, probably causes people to think it's just something that helps old people pee. I can just imagine an Estonian ad for fennel tablets (herbal remedies are very popular here, and the ads are often amateurish): An old woman struggling to look at the camera, smiling with her off-colored dentures, saying, “Thanks to Fennelex Tablets, I don’t have to leave the room as often when I have guests. And when I was a young mother back before the war, I tripled my breast milk and my baby Tiit got over his colic.” (Whereas colic has no known cause or cure.) Whatever, but it’s a sadly missed ingredient in European pizzas.

Opera Pizza, on Vanemuine Street, has always produced consistently good pies. They have something close to a deep dish as well, called a maxi pizza. I’ll refrain from stating the obvious. And their signature pizza is the best, in my book. The only mistake they’ve ever made is changing the original salami topping to the Tuhat ja Tuline sausage. The name of this is a pun, in fact. It’s an expression used along the lines of “Holy moly” but literally it means Thousand and Spicy. The staff are usually more than happy to make the necessary changes though. I order the pizza with no olives, and substitute the Holy Moly with the old-school salami.But then of course I’m entitled to an extra topping. Extra cheese. It can still be fairly spicy, however, and when ordering you would do well to watch the oven—make sure they don’t leave it in too long. That’s a frequent mistake here—forgetting your pizza for an extra thirty seconds. That oven’s hot, and no one likes a burned crust.

Mrs. Mingus usually gets the Frutti di mare (seafood) pizza, and you can be certain they use the freshest seafood a can can provide. Another good one is the Romana, yet sometimes it can be a bit heavy on the blue cheese.

There are always people in here. Usually students and foreigners. Why? Because it’s good, it’s cheap, it’s fast, and I’d like to think it’s because Opera Pizza is owned by a Finn. He knows how to keep the place in shape, giving it facelifts every three or four years, but without committing Estonians’ usual bar and restaurant faux pas: sterility. It’s not overly modern, yet it is run down in a very comfortable way. And the pizza is great for hangovers! No oilier than its Yankee counterpart.

Back in the days when you had to put your dishes on a table by the kitchen, I wanted to use the jaan once. The cashier—Kristiina—seemed scared. She told me to go out the back door into the hallway, to the right, down the stairs, to the left, and then it was either the third or fourth blue door on one of the sides, she couldn’t remember. The whole building is used for various enterprises, as they say here. An art gallery, maybe some sort of school, people might even live there (artists who never go home). It was an unrenovated Soviet-era jaan, and I got lost on the way back to the pizzeria. I ended up exiting the other side of the building and walking in through the front door again. Kristiina saw me and gave me a polite and apologetic smile that said sorry, but it’s your fault for not eating our pizza with a fork and knife and then wanting to wash your hands.

That’s one thing that gets me in Europe. The lack of finger food. Maybe we North Americans are just cavemen, but certain foods require the use of fingers. French fries, pizza, buffalo wings. Maybe the habit developed because these are all mostly bar foods and it’s probably better to keep sharp, pointed metal utensils out of drunk people’s hands (and Americans are way over the top in safety, due to our culture of lawsuits). But I kid you not, I see people forking their fries all the time, and I’m sure there’s some scarfed woman somewhere in Tartu who cuts her chewing gum before nibbling on it for lunch.

So for this review, of course I went to the jaan, marked WC, for waterless closet. They had just remodeled in the past year, I believe, and the sink I guess had already been vandalized? There was a pipe sticking out of the wall. Two stalls though, one occupied, so I went in the other and almost tripped on the mop and bucket and stack of napkins in boxes. Incidentally they don’t cut their napkins here—anymore. I guess business is going well.

This place has the slowest card payment terminal I’ve ever seen in Europe. It takes at least a minute for it to go through. But at least you can pay by card now. For years it was the only restaurant where you couldn’t. That, and the fact that they don’t deliver home, are the only negative things about Opera Pizza. Honestly I don’t understand how places like Hagari Pitsakohvik (Hagar Pizzacafé) can stay in business. Wouldn’t word have got out now that the ante has been upped? Indeed was upped more than a decade ago? Expectations are just too low in Tartu.

Istanbul

What country is always in a hurry to eat? Russia. What country eats the scales, skeleton and everything else of a fish? Finland. These horrible nationalistic puns could continue, but I don’t want to scare away any of my readers. On with the review.

My Dutch friend who visited last weekend decided we both wanted to eat while out walking through Tartu’s Old Town. We were very Hungary, with a craving for Chile, but we didn’t want too much Greece, so we opted for Turkey. He asked if I’d ever had a Turkish pizza, and when I answered no, he insisted we grab a quick bite at Istanbul, on Rüütli Street. It was a good choice.

The downtown area was fairly crowded for a Sunday afternoon, and most of the tables on Town Hall Square reeked of Finnish breath. Yet Istanbul was empty. We were the only two customers. I got the distinct impression we were the first people to eat there all day. Hell, maybe even that week! And I think I know why.

Estonians seem to be largely afraid of Middle Eastern cultures. They love to go there on package tours because it’s warm and they’re suddenly rich, instead of counting their senti in Stockholm, but otherwise they want to stick to fatty pork and boiled potatoes. And if a couple of Estonians do happen to walk in to Istanbul, the interior décor might be a bit off-putting. It’s wall-to-wall pink. Estonians don’t want to feel like they’re eating in their bedrooms.

The other problem is the owner. According to our waitress—Kristiina—he is Turkish, but lived in Georgia for several years. That’s why I heard him conversing with some would-be customers in fluent Russian. But the problem is his skin color. He’s too dark for Tartu.

I remember about six years ago when La Dolce Vita opened up (a local pizzeria), the review given in the Postimees newspaper made a big deal about "dark-skinned" people cooking and serving food. They were talking about Italians. Another, recent article in the same paper made a big deal about "dark-skinned" doctors (from India it turned out) treating patients in the local hospital. I can only imagine the phobia of this guy at Istanbul. And he stands by the door, visible through the window from the street. From my point of view, if a restauranteur in Estonia is not pasty white, he probably knows what he’s doing in the kitchen. But an Estonian in Estonia judges not by his taste buds but by what is least offensive to what he considers normal.

There are also some Estonians who walk around the city claiming to want something “fresh” or “real,” whatever that might mean. They’re eager to try new things because it is cool to be seen trying new things. I didn’t see those people in Istanbul.

Anyhow, we both ordered Turkish pizzas. Basically kebab-style meat with sauce and veggies rolled up, it was only sixty-five kroons or so. Not entirely filling, but completely satisfying. I’d eat it again. But for just thirty kroons, I wanted to try one of their appetizers.

I don’t remember what it was called because I was so hungry I forgot to take a lot of photos (I ate most of my pizza before I remembered to take a photo), but it was essentially a tomato sauce with herbs and garlic and so on, served with bread. We asked Kristiina if it was big enough for two, and she said yes. In reality, while delicious, it was a plate of sauce with two tiny pieces of Turkish bread (I assume it was homemade and Turkish, because I’ve not seen it in local shops on sale—keep in mind I know nothing about Turkish cuisine). After we’d both been careful not to exceed the bread-to-sauce ratio, over half the sauce was left after the bread was gone.

We asked for more bread if possible, but Kristiina said she’d have to ask the owner, and I suddenly felt like the slovenly Yankee who wanted a free refill for his liter a cola.

Kristiina was suspiciously nice. She was also rather voluptuous. Not two minutes went by between her visits to the table. She would exude a broad, genuine smile—not the faked up American mask—and it was all I could do to not look down her shirt. And I didn’t—not a single time. But my Hollandish friend claimed to be able to see her thingies. See, she was tall, and had to bend way down and over the table to place our orders before us.

For all her extreme and authentic courtesy, it still took her almost ten minutes to open a bottle of water and pour it into a glass. The appetizer also arrived thirty seconds before the Turkish pizza. That’s somewhat of a problem here in Estonia. Whether you call it an appetizer, starter or hors d’œuvres, the idea is that you get it fast and before your main dish, so you can enjoy both separately. Estonians don’t seem to understand this concept. It’s more of a side dish here. I’ve even had appetizers delivered after having paid the bill. Why is that?

I also ate here on my birthday last year. I think it must have just opened, because a week before I hadn’t noticed it while walking by. It’s a very good restaurant. Certainly healthy. It goes far beyond grilled meat and red bell peppers sliced up and branded Armenian or Georgian. I think they had some good vodkas at the bar, too, but I can’t remember.

Just don’t expect something amazing like what you’d see on the Travel Channel. You can’t get those kinds of ingredients in Tartu anyhow. Maybe in Pärnu, Tallinn, Võru or Viljandi, but not Tartu. Tartu for some reason seems to be the furthest behind in Estonia in many ways. It’s surprising, I thought. “Usually the people who claim to be the most open-minded and progressive are in fact the least so, because they think they already are, and so stop trying,” Dutch told me when walking out. And that’s not surprising, I think.

Kissing Students

Most town hall squares in Europe have a statue or fountain dedicated to a military leader or the ensuing victory and peace achieved by said military leader. Tartu has a statue of two kids making out. It’s called Kissing Students, and a bar on the square decided to call itself the same thing. It’s actually a double bar. The one next to it used to be called Tax Office. It didn’t take too long for them to change the name. But they both share the same kitchen, and if you want to take your baby carriage to the other bar, you have to go through Kissing Students (Suudlevad Tudengid in Estonian) and use the hidden corridor beyond the bar.

Some friends had been telling me for months that this place served the best steak they’d ever had. Of course I went. There are two steaks on the menu. Choose the cheaper one, as apparently the costlier cut doesn’t cut it. The danger, however, is the attitude with which you enter, now that you’ve read the “best steak” claim. If you expect that, you’ll be disappointed. If you just walk in and haphazardly decide to order the steak—a risky endeavor in Tartu—you’ll be very pleasantly, um, pleased.

We entered Kissing Students with some weekend guests. Four adults and four children. After a bit of trouble organizing the seating arrangements, we decided to get some menus for ourselves. Ten minutes later, a waitress finally showed up—Kristiina—and started taking our orders. She was in a terrible rush to leave for some reason, so as we hadn’t quickly and systematically expressed our wishes in a manner befitting her logic, she offered to come back later when we’d decided. The thing is, we all ordered carbonated water and steak, all medium-rare and served with fries. We asked if they had anything for kids, as half the table was under the age of four, and she only just then thought it might be a good idea to supply us with kids’ menus, and only one of them at that. The kids were fighting over it.

A moment after ordering, we decided to change one of the tyke’s orders. Kristiina said it wasn’t possible because she’d already entered it in their computer. Apparently it was a Mac because it didn't have a Delete key. But we persuaded her to physically go to the kitchen a couple meters away and tell the cook to ignore the computer.

After we ordered, Kristiina for some reason forgot to take away the menus. Four menus, four drinks lists and a kids’ menu. They took up a lot of space, so I expressed my architectural candor by building a house out of them. Kristiina didn’t like that. She didn’t like us either I think. Especially after I cut out the kids’ menu along the lines, like I thought was the intention.

A funny thing was that we received a bread basket—also containing salt, pepper and so forth—and there were exactly eight tiny rolls.

A short twelve minutes later, two of us received our beef. Eight minutes later, the rest of the table got theirs. By this time, our waitress had decided to abandon us, sending another waitress our way, also named Kristiina. I found that a bit odd, but whatever. The woman at the bar was named Õpilane. That’s a pretty name.

The steak was a color that I’d never seen for beef. It was topped with onions and sea salt, with a dish of red wine sauce. Incredibly tender, simply delicious. Well worth the money, and it was pretty big too. Not the “best steak” but the best in Estonia so far (I’ve heard good stuff about the Romanian chef at Illegaard, a bar I want to eat at soon). The only problem was that like most beef in Estonia, it was cut incorrectly.

That’s the thing about Estonian beef. They have their own chart for beef cuts. So does the US and so does the UK. The Estonians call this cut an external filet. In the US or UK this part would be any one of a number of cuts, all prized specialties. An external filet could be anything from a T-bone steak to a porterhouse.

Who’s right? Well, I personally am not at all familiar with the British system, but the US and UK have a strong culture of beef consumption, and Estonia does not. A large number of Estonians in fact think that a good hamburger is made of ground poultry or pork. The first time I made a hamburger here, the Estonians watching were shocked that I didn’t pack bread and garlic into the patty. Now, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, because most Americans don’t know the first thing about couscous, which is very common in large swathes of the planet, but then again you don’t see Americans telling Algerians how to prepare it. And at least Algerians cut their meat in the right direction with regard to the texture of the muscle.

Pickled mushrooms were served as a side. A lot of pickled mushrooms. The first one was good, but not the second or third. They tasted like they’d come out of a can, not fresh as one would expect with steak of this quality.

One of the children ordered what I believe was referred to as a meat pie on the menu. It had more in common with quiche, but it was pretty good, and filling. No one walked away hungry.

The jaans are easy to find, one on each floor, and have a healthy mixture of uncleanliness and fashion. You won’t want to sit on the seat, but you’ll look cool squatting over it!

I’ve been here at night before a couple times as well. Once I waited twenty minutes for the guy in front of me to get his drink, standing at the bar to order. He just wanted a coffee. The only reason I didn’t leave was because my friends were already there.

Another time, Father Mingus was in Estonia for a visit, and we were having drinks with another American. He had filled out an application for the client card, which does offer good discounts, and when I asked if I could use the pen to write something down, he said the waitress had given it to him, so sure. So Father Mingus and I decided to play a joke when he wasn’t looking. We modified it to where it would fire a small projectile (essentially reversing the spring and one other inner mechanism). But then we couldn’t put it back together. At that moment, the waitress returned to ask for her pen back, the several disassembled pieces of which our poor friend was holding in his hand. We left a moment later after paying. We didn’t tell him we’d also added a questionable image on the back of his application. I don’t know if they granted him a card or not.

Let’s keep in mind that this is a bar though, not a restaurant. In that sense, this meal was great. But food served depends on various things. Quality ingredients, recipes and the chef. You can’t have the same chef at work all the time. I think this time we had the good chef. The other chef supposedly isn’t very good, and neither is his steak. As I said, dining in Tartu is a risky endeavor.

Võru

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is interpreted and understood by many to mean that if you travel in Earth orbit at light speed for a year, down on the planet four years will have passed. I guess you won’t be looking up your ex when you get back. Yet regardless of the popular mythology surrounding Albert’s field equations, it does seem to find supporting evidence in an unexpected place—Võru. This small town in Southern Estonia relies on leftovers from Tartu, which in turn feeds on the leftovers of Tallinn, scraping up the scraps from Helsinki.

You could make another physics analogy. Inside the universe, galaxy clusters resemble galaxies themselves in structure. And star systems have a similar build. Central core, orbiting bodies on a plane. The planets are the same—moons in motion. And atoms of course with their nuclei and electrons. And this is relative to Võru and restaurant reviews how? I shall now present my proof for the Theory of Ketchup.

Mrs. Mingus and I take the kids fairly often to our summer cabin near Võru. Every once in a while we just can’t take another bite of anything prepared on a grill, so we retreat to the “city” (as the locals call it) in search of sustenance. The “city” as a whole is deserving of a review, but nothing individual in it. Remember, this is the home of the Kubija Restaurant, whose menu at one time offered “fresh fish froth” (värske kalavaht) on their menu.

We begin our culinary equation at Õlle 17 (Beer 17), on Jüri Street—Võru’s main drag. It used to be the most Western-style bar in Estonia in terms of décor, but they made the mistake of doubling its size and using office furniture and floors. Stick to the left when you go in, and you’ll be fine. But whatever you do, don’t eat there.

A couple years ago I ordered a burger and onion rings. You know, onion rings—deep fried, can’t go wrong. They asked me if I wanted them on my burger. Thirty kroons a serving for the onion rings, and do I want them on my burger? No, on the side was fine. My burger, nothing more than edible, was served with sautéed (fried apparently in the Võro dialect) onion rings on the plate. Not battered and deep-fried. I guess they had only read about them, never actually tried them.

So this time I asked if the onion rings were proper. And they were. They were very good in fact, but at fifty kroons for a plate of eight, it’s not worth it. I asked if the pizza advertised on the wall was made in-house. “Yes, of course,” answered the waitress—Kristiina—with an air of superiority. In reality it was on a premade and heated crust, served with bologna and ketchup. Come on, ketchup? I thought those days were over in the former Soviet Union. There’s been a lot of debate lately about whether Estonia is Eastern European or not. It most definitely is. If you serve ketchup on pasta or pizza, you’re not Western. Sorry.

Neither of us could finish the second bite of our food. When the kids woke up in the car and came inside to eat, our older one asked, “What’s that?” while pointing at the plates. She knows what food is, too. She still had to ask. And their main courses are well over a hundred kroons. Way, way more expensive than Tartu.

So the next outing in Võru was at a small mall called Kagu Keskus, home of Southern Estonia’s only escalator. I’ve written about two eateries here in City of Good Thoughts—both of which have closed. The burrito place, pretty good in my opinion, went out of business. It’s been replaced with a kiosk that serves the traditional Estonian fare—meat burgers, sour cream and ketchup. The place was packed when we went! For reasons unknown it’s called CityCoffee.

It’s dirt cheap, but then so are the ingredients. There’s no actual cooking there, apart from the microwave and deep-fryer. The kids got a slab of meat and fries. They wouldn’t eat it. I asked the proprietor—Kristel—what kind of meat it was. She didn’t know. “We just heat it up.”

Restaurants are a very good indicator of what the local people are like. Tartu serves wannabe gourmet food and people wear scarves when they eat it. Võru serves ketchup and people lap it up. Võru doesn’t appear to be that different from the rest of Estonia.

Last year we tried a place called Spring Cafe. Not Café but Cafe. Like the owner was wearing wet underwear and began to cafe. On the shores of Lake Tamula, it’s a nice place, no doubt. The interior downstairs is a bit stiff, and the second floor is a bit stifling, but the terrace is what it should be—breezy, lake smell, lake view and all that. When we went last year, we found it by accident. All the roads in Võru were closed for repairs, except Petseri Street—loaded with pitfalls and potholes. But we left when, after ordering and waiting half an hour for food, I had to ask when the food was coming. Krista, the only freckled Estonian I’ve ever seen—our waitress—answered, “Oh, forty-five minutes more? Not too long.” The place was empty.

We gave it another try this week. I ordered a Caesar salad. It was pretty good to be honest, although it was covered in powdered, processed cheese or something or other. Mrs. Mingus ordered the risotto and liked it. The kids however wouldn’t eat their pasta. I tasted it and I think the chicken had gone bad. That, and the pool of butter filling up half the bowl. They liked my salad though, so I went hungry. Again.

It’s a well-known secret, this place. Sitting on the terrace next to us was Tartu’s only black man, Tanoka Beard, an American basketballer currently playing for Tartu Rock.



The prices here are a bit high but nothing too scary. They don’t compare to a “workers’ diner” just outside of the downtown area though. Kohvik Võrusoo (Võrusoo Café) on Kreutzwaldi Street, just before the railroad crossing, consistently offers Soviet-style dining—which ain’t that bad—in an unlit room that resembles an elementary school cafeteria. You can get the biggest plate they offer for just forty kroons. The Cokes are room temperature though. Better hurry to this place, it closes at four, and is only open on weekdays. After driving across the greater metropolitan area of Võru (population fifteen thousand), the roads, which were supposedly resurfaced last summer—but you’d never know—did unseen damage to our older girl. We walked in, hungry for a quick, cheap lunch, and our daughter walked up to the counter and vomited.

No problem! The woman at the counter—Kristin—handed me a wad of napkins so it would be easier for me to clean up the mess. Thing is, this is a truly Soviet-era place. They still cut the napkins here! What does that mean, you might ask? To save money, napkins were cut into smaller pieces so they would last longer, less expense. But the Võrusoo Café goes to extremes. Instead of the normally cut napkin, consisting of one ply of paper, they cut their napkins into individual plies and then cut those into quarters. At one point, the floor looked like a mucous mosaic.

We do come to this place regularly though. I feel like I’m at camp again, only the food is better, you can’t see the old cafeteria ladies with the hairnets, and there was no beer served at my school.

There are other places to eat at in Võru. Ränduri, again on Jüri Street, is pretty good too, but again way overpriced. The coffee is good. Served in a stone cup and prepared by a guy with whom I wouldn’t want to be alone in a dark room, it’s usually full of Finns in the summer, drinking vodka all day as soon as it opens. It’s nothing special, but it’s not bad enough to write about.

So the Theory of Ketchup is postulated as follows: if you travel at the Speed of Estonia for one hour in any direction, from one city to another, you go back in time to…when? You can never be certain. No one at any point in history has ever served ketchup on bread and called it pizza. But you will return with less mass than when you left.