Kohvipaus

“You don’t, by chance, want to drop off the kids for a few hours, do you?” Mrs. Mingus-in-law asked on the phone Saturday morning. Half an hour later we were speeding down the road to grandmother’s house, the children singing in unison, “I don’t wanna’ go to Grandma’s house!” That’s not why we were speeding though. I was hungry. So hungry I could feel the shakes coming on. After dropping them off, I asked Mrs. Mingus where the closest food was. Lõunakeskus, the mall. But neither of us wanted a burger.

By the ice rink is a strange pair of restaurants. A Chinese place and an Italian joint, right next to each other, overlooking the ice and apparently owned by the same people. We looked at the glass shelf with premade food. Nothing appealing. The menu offered a renewed hope, however. Shaking, I pointed at a croissant sandwich with a description of an egg, sunny-side up, and bacon. Mrs. Mingus chose the same thing. The photo in the menu looked delicious.

“Hi, could we have two egg-and-bacon croissants, please?”
The woman behind the counter—Krista, I believe—said nothing, but proceeded to pull out two items from the glass shelf.
“Excuse me, but that’s not a croissant.”
—Of course not.
“We wanted a croissant sandwich.”
—We don’t have any.
“That’s just a store-bought hamburger bun. With grated cheese burned onto it.”
—Fifty-six kroons.
“Are you just out of croissants? Or you never have them?” I persisted.
—Why would we have croissants?
“Um, because you have them on the menu, and in the photograph?”
—This is the same thing.
“No, it’s a hamburger bun. I don’t want a hamburger bun with an old egg in it.”
She shrugged and stared off past my shoulder, patiently waiting for me to pay.
“This is completely false advertising,” I continued. My stomach growled. Was I really going to eat this? Krista just kept staring, no apology for insulting people’s intelligence by expecting them to buy a hamburger bun and think it was a croissant. I gave up.
“No thank you.” Krista looked at me like I was a snob. And we walked away. “Hey, what about Breadway, on the other side? They have baguettes for their sandwiches.” Mrs. Mingus agreed that she, too, was still in the mood for a sandwich.

On the way, I couldn’t help but notice that almost every single man we passed had super-short hair and an angry expression, masked by hangover eyes, being pulled along by a woman with jet-black dyed hair eating a doughnut and yelling at their kids. That’s right, it was only eleven on Saturday morning.

The doughnuts came from Breadway’s new doughnut machine. I’d had them before—pretty good, too, I might add. A classical, simple doughnut, the kind we get at that café just off Rüütli Street in Pärnu first thing when we arrive for our annual trip to the beach. It seems, however, that doughnuts had replaced baguettes at this little sandwicherie. Breadway’s glass shelf, at a time when everyone was hungry after a night of boozing, was almost empty. Twelve sandwiches listed, and only one little pickle-and-cheese concoction available. Inside a hamburger bun. At a place called Breadway. We started walking back to the car, my stomach trying to establish contact with the hangover guys. No language barrier there.

“How do these places stay in business?” I asked Mrs. Mingus.
—It doesn’t bother them. People like it because it fills them up.
“Eating food is celebrated with about as much fanfare as when it exits.”
—Don’t be disgusting.

We decided that if we wanted to pay money for food, we’d be willing to suffer a bit longer in search of something enjoyable to eat. We drove downtown and decided to get a crêpe at Crepp. We’d given in to the National Crêpe Obsession. While walking down Rüütli Street—not the one in Pärnu, obviously—I glanced through the window of one of those shops that are now almost extinct. The kind that sell old women’s gigantic underwear from Poland. Only I didn’t see cheap lingerie. I saw salad, and beer. We checked it out.

A new place had secretly opened, with a tiny, unassuming sign by the door. Kohvipaus, it read. Say “kohvipaus” out loud and you’ll understand what it means in English. If you can say h and v at the same time.

This tiny little café had a tiny little salad bar, but at least it was fresh, and offered real lettuce, not Chinese cabbage. The waitress would prepare it in front of your eyes, and it was cheap. And the sandwiches—oh, the sandwiches—were scrumptiously crafted inside baguettes! The mother lode. I was so giddy at having found a baguette sandwich I felt like jumping in the air and clicking my heels together, but the twenty-year old guy sitting on the sofa distracted me. He was wearing a suit and had straight hair that looked like he was wearing a wig backwards. Obviously a frat boy, with his frat hat on the table next to his chips and Coke.

I wondered if he was one of the frat boys who were sieg-heiling last Thursday night. Apparently, a group of guys from the Sakala fraternity were bothering customers in a local bar by yelling out “Sieg Heil!” over and over, right arms stretched to the ceiling. They were asked to leave, and were seen by numerous witnesses marching down the road in single file, continuing their chant. And these guys all had hair. I wonder what the baldies would think.

So anyhow, this baguette sandwich cost a whopping eighteen kroons. It was simple—a couple slices of ham, some cheese, the end of a tomato and lettuce, with butter instead of mayonnaise, and a kind offer from the waitress (her name was Krista, too!) to warm it up. I was famished, which is perhaps why I enjoyed it so much, but it was one of the better sandwiches I’d had in Tartu. Most local sandwiches are stuffed with pickles and served in hamburger buns. Merely improving the quality of the base ingredient—bread—makes such a noticeable difference.

I went back for more (you order at the register, as it’s mostly a take-away place). Sandwiches sold out. There were constantly people coming in and buying food. All they had left at that moment was chicken and salad wrapped in a tortilla (remember people, you don’t actually pronounce the double l in “tortilla”). It had a tad too much lettuce in proportion to the rest of the ingredients, but it was very good, especially considering the price.

Ordering coffee was a bit tricky. I wanted milk, but I was warned that “milk coffee” on the menu actually meant a latte, and that if I wanted milk in my coffee, I would have to order “coffee with milk” instead of “milk coffee”. But it was served in a mug if you drank it there. The coffee stand was inviting and cozy. I also noticed a fruit stand by the door. Not “fresh” fruit, as the bananas were starting to spot and shrivel, but at least they were offering fruit. The chocolate and almond cookies are very good. I didn’t want any of the pastries on their glass shelves, because they were all made by Astri Pagar, a local bakery chain. I’m a Pagaripoisid man, myself. “Baker Boys”. Best bakery chain in Estonia. A shame they don’t sell more of their products in Tartu.

I glanced at the shelf next to the coffee stand. Sometimes when you hang out at a café, sipping coffee, you just want some peanuts, or a candy bar. Kohvipaus sells both. And on rare occasions, you might even want hand-knitted gloves. I was in the mood for a Mars bar, but unfortunately they only offered the fifty-one gram version. I wanted the fifty-two, so I passed.

Beer was available on tap, fifteen kroons a half liter. But it’s a take-away café. Could you buy a beer and walk around town with it? I saw that their doors opened at seven in the morning. It seems to be Tartu’s first coffee-on-the-way-to-work place. Or maybe just another option for that last beer on the way home. Has anyone else noticed that all the bars are suddenly open all night? Twenty-four hours almost. It’s shockingly easy to get a beer at all hours of the night. I live fairly close to downtown, and I’ve been woken up several times in recent weeks by drunken revelers passing by my bedroom window.

I like Kohvipaus. It’s a good place to get a quick and tasty bite on a budget. It’s a bit dirty inside—the snack shelf was badly in need of a dusting—but it’s a healthy, comfortable mix of Home and Modern. Not too sterile, but no velvety curtains or doyleys, which is a definite plus. I guess the best description of it would be an upscale gas station without the gas. They do serve hotdogs, after all. Stick one of those doughnut machines inside and Kohvipaus will be the king of the Old Town. Tourists always want doughnuts. They’ll go home and say, “Yeah, Tartu had those good doughnuts.” Versus what they say now: “We went to Tartu. There’s a university there.”

However, I couldn’t help but notice that Kohvipaus is the only café I’ve ever seen that is closed on Sunday. That’s the day when no one has anything to do. They went to great lengths to set their prices so they would be competitive. You will not find less expensive food and beer downtown—at least not for that quality and in that atmosphere. Naturally they would be closed at peak hours. I wonder if you can make reservations there.

Roadkill Café

Tartu is a wonderful city. Its spirit infected me when I first stepped off the train. The smell of tar from the railway station, the wooden map that showed the entire city yet offered no street names and was thus utterly useless. I looked forward to getting lost on its streets, and I felt safe doing so. More than a decade later, I still feel safe wandering the tree alleys, cobblestoned roads and grassy parks that dot the town.

As I got to know the history of this city on the Emajõgi River, I heard hard-to-believe claims that Tartu has been destroyed fifty-five times throughout its history. I can’t see how that’s possible, but it was largely destroyed by the Great Northern War and the Second World War. If you stand on Town Hall Square and look toward the big pink Town Hall, it’s mind-boggling to know that everything to the left of and behind City Hall is a product of the Twentieth Century. I’ve seen the photos that show the wasteland after the Nazis and Soviets rumbled in the bog that is Tartu. This place is no stranger to violence.

During the Soviet occupation, Tartu “happily” hosted a massive airbase that was home to the bombers that would nuke Europe in the event of a failure to communicate between a couple old white guys in far-off cities east and west of here. For that reason, it was a “closed city”, meaning you couldn’t just come and go as you pleased. These days, you can buy a used car and test-drive it on that old runway. There are plans in the works to plop down a museum in the same place. A really, really long museum.

One of my favorite things is that instead of monuments to the people who have interfered with and intervened on behalf of Estonian history—warriors, I mean—you instead have monuments to scientists and artists. Well, there is Barclay de Tolly’s bust, and a General Laidoner on the other side of town, and Kalevipoeg, who looks suspiciously like Tõnis Lukas, the Minister of Education. De Tolly is an interesting character. A Lithuanian-born, German-speaking Scotsman with a French name who was raised in Livonia (now Estonia and Latvia) and who fought for Russia and invaded France.

Estonia has been ruled by Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Russia and, of course, Estonia. I’m probably forgetting a couple as well. There have been two successful drives for independence. Estonians obviously don’t like people telling them what to do, which is fully understandable. I wouldn’t want anyone telling me to fight in a war I’m not personally vested in. I wouldn’t want anyone telling me to not question the nature of my government. I wouldn’t want anyone telling me I have to live with people I don’t like.

But we don’t really live in that world anymore. At least Estonia doesn’t. It’s free. The people of Estonia are free to think and act as they choose. The people of Tartu are free to create their own image. Yet no one is free of the consequences of their actions. If you do something, you will have a reputation for doing that thing. If you get caught driving drunk just once, you will be known as a drunk driver for an awfully long time. I’m satisfied with Tartu’s current international image—that of a blind, drunk driver who got caught twice, and where people have sex on top of the bridges in broad daylight. Some local students placed a bed with an inflatable sex doll in the same place. If that isn’t a great sense of humor, I don’t know what is. Maybe we should all dress in bandages today, to mock ourselves for our recent actions.

Every city in the world has been victimized by the actions of its own citizens. A foreign tourist getting mugged in New York City would hardly make the news. A gang-related shooting in Compton, California? That’s just the world we live in. Anyone who doesn’t like it is free to up and leave.

Or you can stand up and say, “Wait a minute, this is not right. This is not the world I want.” As a foreigner, I cannot say that about Tartu. Only its citizens can, right?

I am free to leave Tartu, yet I choose to stay. My children are Estonian, and I make damned sure to teach them about the histories of two countries, to be proud of two peoples. I choose to raise my family in Tartu, Estonia. And I choose to stand up, have my voice heard: We will not tolerate violence in our city, on our streets.

A lot of people might disagree with the use of “we” and “our” in that statement, and that’s their right. But Tartu is not a closed city. It is part of the world, and the world should be embraced.

There have been several beatings of foreigners over the years. Nothing anyone would refer to as an actual problem, because the ratio of Estonians and Russians getting the crap kicked out of them is undoubtedly the same. Yet in the past few days, there have been three incidents of violence against foreigners.

The Postimees newspaper today wrote about a fight outside Pattaya, a local nightclub. Mace was involved, and everyone was drunk. Rumor has it one of the foreigners is still in a coma.

On Saturday night, a foreigner was walking home with two Estonians. Two different Estonian men apparently approached them on Võru Street and sprayed mace in the face of one of the Estonian friends of the foreigner. The other Estonian victim managed to escape and call the police. When they arrived, the two attackers were caught red-footed, repeatedly kicking the foreigner in the head. I’ll assume that alcohol had been consumed by at least some of those involved, but the foreigner must be over fifty. He’s not going to pick a fight with anyone. The attackers in both of these cases were arrested.

[The details concerning nationality and profession regarding the specific story above have been changed per the request of the victim, pending the trial of the attackers.]

Monday night, another foreigner was outside Püssirohukelder, the famous Gunpowder Cellar—the tallest pub in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. A group of three guys asked him something in Russian, he replied (I assume in English) that he didn’t speak Russian, and then they beat the hell out of him. He was taken to the hospital and his head X-rayed, but he’ll probably be fine. One of his eyes is completely shut though. I don’t know if the attackers were arrested.

[I received information via a mutual friend regarding this incident as well. The victim had been at Püssirohukelder but was walking in front of the Hotell Tartu, behind the Statoil on Turu Street, when he was attacked. The victim further learned that the same night, a coworker—an Estonian, not a foreigner—was also attacked by three people speaking Russian one hundred meters from the same location, just two hours earlier. The attackers asked him for a cigarette, and while he was distracted with pulling one out, he was attacked.]

I have not personally spoken to any of the victims, but I have first-hand accounts from mutual friends regarding the last two incidents.

As I said at the beginning, I’ve never felt unsafe in Tartu. Never, not once. But three incidents in a week is borderline suspicious. I choose to give Tartu the benefit of the doubt and say that it’s merely an ugly coincidence. Maybe people are fed up with the economy and the snow. But it is the duty of the city government and the police to assume otherwise and act accordingly.

But what could they possibly do, right? These three incidents all took place in what locals would refer to as problem areas. Yet if it is a problem area, where is the police presence? These “problem areas” are all right downtown. One of them is across the street from the main building of the university, not to mention immediately behind city hall. And sure, alcohol might have been involved at some level or other, but alcohol is merely an enabler. It is an explanation. It is not an excuse.

I find it extremely ironic that the city is currently campaigning itself as “Tolerant Tartu”. What a slap in the face. As much as I love Tartu, it hurts to admit that if a city has to advertise itself as tolerant, then said city probably has a problem with tolerance.

Originally I wanted to invite people to list any incidents they had personally experienced, or even just heard about. I decided against it. One reader went so far as to politely request that I not make this an “us versus them” post. That is a very wise thing to think, I might add. This situation is, however, an “us versus us” scenario. We all live in this city together. What we do to ourselves is everybody’s business.

It’s doubtful that the perpetrators will get any serious punishment. Jail time is unlikely. But if you know anyone who would pick a fight, beat someone up, harass a nerd, anything like that—I invite you to laugh at them for their cowardice. Perhaps shame is the only thing that will change their ways.

Perhaps the city could provide bumper stickers, buttons, pins and so on that say “Tolerant Tartu”. I know I would proudly sport one.

A lot of you might be thinking now, “How very American of Mingus.” Aaaaaaand...you might be right. But is it a bad thing to want the city you live in to be safe? America has an international reputation as a warring country. I hope you can look beyond that, just as I know that these random acts of violence do not represent the people of Tartu as a whole. It is what the people of Tartu do about it that will define their reputation.

Crepp

“Hey Mingus, they’re closing the meat restaurant!” —The meat restaurant? “The meat restaurant,” Mrs. Mingus shouted out to me late last week while reading the paper. Frantically I snatched the article from her hands and devoured it, hungry for a reason. “There just aren’t enough diners who eat out,” it reads—that’s really all the explanation there is. “Holy Crepp, you’re right!” I exclaimed, and picked up the phone to reserve a table.

There is more of an explanation, of course. One of the problems in Tartu’s restaurant scene is the reservation. But in order to understand how it is an issue that will need to be dealt with at some point, we must first categorize the local eateries. Tartu has a lot of places that are very expensive, considering what’s offered. Sometimes a small gimmick, usually void of customers and taste, and almost always some sort of pastel wall paint—purple and pink seem to be the favorites. As if frighteningly bright colors will whisk away bad attitudes and surly service on a dark winter night.

Next obviously is fast food. There has been a sudden expanse in fried variety of late. I’ll call it the Fatten Explosion and also apologize in the same sentence. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that the casinos are finally clearing out of the city en masse, replaced with numerous outlets for the same wholesale fries and mystery meat burgers. Evidently the government’s new regulation requiring mandatory background checks and DNA sampling upon entering a casino are having the desired effect. Will they next pass a similar law requiring some sort of examination upon entering a strip club?

The third category of restaurants in Tartu would be, well, everything else. Crepp, on Rüütli Street, falls into this group. If you want a nice atmosphere, decent service and edible food, you will eat at one of these places. And so will everyone else, which is why you often need to make a reservation. So many times over the years I’ve taken Mrs. Mingus out for a night on the town, only to be turned away from place after place because there are no tables available. What they do have, however, is a dining area half full of customers, and half full of empty tables with a nice little brass paperweight that says “Broneeritud” or “Reserveeritud”. One such eatery—the kind that cuts its napkins to cut costs—merely had a handwritten sign indicating that our table was reserved. I asked the help for a marker and printed a large P before the word. A week later they were still using the sign that read “Preserved” on their table. Paper must have been at a premium. Or maybe they just didn’t notice. Yeah, that’s probably it.

So on the phone with Krista—the waitress from Crepp—I was disappointed that I couldn’t have the large table for ten. I knew lots of people who would want one more meal here. The whole place was already reserved, except for one small table for two in the corner. I convinced Krista that we really wouldn’t mind having a third chair squeezed in as well. When we arrived, however, I wasn’t too surprised to see that except for two other tables, the place was empty. We were bumped up to a larger table for five due to a cancellation, but as we were near the door I couldn’t help but notice three different groups of people who were turned away because they didn’t have a reservation. This is not good business, in my book.

This reminds me of an experience in Tsink Plekk Pang years ago. Mrs. Mingus had just graduated and we reserved a very large table to celebrate. Every inch of our table was packed with friends, ordering food and drink. Basically giving the restaurant lots of money. We even had chairs behind chairs, all occupied. The rest of the restaurant was virtually empty, yet we still behaved and kept our voices down. Then suddenly the waiter—Kristjan—abruptly told us that we would have to leave.
“Why?” we asked in bewilderment.
—Another group is coming, and they reserved this table.
“Are you serious? But we’ve been here for hours.”
He just stared at us, a hint of expression in his eyes that suggested he didn’t understand why we didn’t just accept how we were being treated, as was his wont.
“So we’re giving you lots of business, the place is empty, and you want us to leave?”
—Yes.
“Why?”
—The table is reserved.
“No, the table is occupied.”
—Here’s your bill.
“Is this honestly how you treat customers?!”
—I don’t know.
“What?”
—What?
“Do you treat all your customers like this?”
—I don’t know.
And he walked back to the bar. I wasn’t going to let it go that easily, so I got up and followed him.
“Listen, my wife just graduated today. That’s a big deal, you understand? We would really like to continue having a good time here. Is there any way you can move the next group to a different table?”
—No.
“Why not? The place is empty!”
—They specifically wanted this table.
“But we’re specifically here! Right now! When did the other party call?”
—Half an hour ago.
“And you don’t think that maybe there is something wrong with what you’ve done?”
—We are running a business here, and we don’t want to turn away customers.
“But you’re throwing out a large, paying group!”
He just shrugged. I went back to the table, paid in cash and left my beer for him. Evenly distributed all over the tablecloth and a couple chairs.
“Oops,” I mentioned as we walked out.

Crepp is a very small place. Seven tables I think (there’s also a café downstairs with a different menu). We were upstairs obviously. Upstairs is the part that’s closing. I think it would make much more sense for Tartu’s restaurants to accept no more than a couple reservations on any given night. If you tell someone on the phone, “I’m sorry, we can’t accept any more reservations tonight. But I’m sure we can find you something when you arrive,” it makes the place sound popular, attractive. Like the television ads that tell you to order now while supplies last. Much more welcoming than being turned away at the door of a restaurant with a sea of empty, reserved tables.

Over the past couple years I’ve taken no fewer than three foreign visitors to Crepp for a good dinner. That’s the kind of place it is—was. “I would recommend mystery meat sauce at this place down the street, or going out for a nice steak at Crepp.” I’ve uttered that sentence a few times. But it’s risky. Why? Because the five or six times I’ve eaten here, several of the steaks available have been out on all but two visits. There are only two possible explanations: one, it’s so popular they just sell out of it; and two, they just don’t know how to keep it in stock. I believe the second explanation is more probable. The place is going out of business for lack of patrons, after all. It’s a fairly serious business gaffe for a restaurant that used to be called simply “Meat Restaurant” to be out of meat on a regular basis. Regular at least meaning whenever I personally go there. But to be fair, running out of stock is a ubiquitous practice infecting the city of Tartu.

The owner himself greeted customers at the door this night, and personally took our coats to hang them up. As this was the last time we’d ever be able to eat here, we spent a fair amount of money on booze. Pastis, wine and vodka, mainly. We started with an order of steak tartare—raw ground beef or horse meat, basically. Fortunately ours was Estonian beef. Typically consumed with vodka. Rumor has it it’s the best steak tartare in Estonia, and I would not doubt it. Three orders of chateaubriand, Mrs. Mingus took the duck and I ordered the salmon and tilapia, accompanied by a ninety-four Rioja. We asked the owner if he would care to do a shot with us if we ordered another round, and he answered “Yep!” before the question was even finished.

The steak here is good. I won’t say excellent, but then again I have very high standards for steak these days. I was fortunate enough to be invited to a semi-private dinner at Illegaard with the Romanian chef from Vilde preparing specially imported Brazilian tenderloin. It was amazing. You can’t compare it. This is how I see things now: there is steak, and anything else is just beef. When I got back from the States last month, I tipped my cabbie extra to get me to the bar as fast as possible, only to discover I was the first to arrive. Hungry as I was after international travel, I didn’t wait for any of the other invitees, so I wolfed down my steak (well, actually I slowly ate about a hundred small bites, savoring each) and went home to sleep off my jet lag. In Crepp, the steak is beef. Delicious beef, but still just beef. My fish was good, but it was full of bones. To be honest, it was a bit difficult to eat and it made me paranoid.

The main reason I’ve always liked Crepp upstairs though is the side dishes. These are excellent. The chef here really knows how to cook vegetables, staunchly avoiding the Holy Trinity of Tartu—pineapple, red bell pepper and blue cheese. It’s almost as if the owner should have reversed the menu to read “Wasabi potatoes and ratatouille in red wine sauce, with a side of beef”. I will miss this.

But to clarify my earlier criticisms—Crepp is a well-managed place I believe, a good restaurant. The things I said about reservations and stocking apply to most places in Tartu. I was surprised to find that while Monday is the last day of business, Sunday it was closed. “Why?” I asked him. He’s throwing a dinner party for the staff, cooking it himself. If more bosses in Estonia behaved this way, I suspect the country might move up a couple notches from nearly dead last on virtually every list of world happiness by country.

The atmosphere is tasteful, reminiscent of the “boom time” of a couple years ago when it opened. It was unquestionably marketed for the nouveau riche—the people who just recently began to make money for the first time and immediately went out and bought peacock costumes and paraded around like they were professionals who danced on the floats in Rio’s Carnaval. Those people are still around of course, but they are all wearing Monton now and frequenting hamburger joints across the city.

And that’s just what gets my goat. Crepp is closing for the wrong reason. Past criticisms aside, a good restaurant should only be forced to close if there are too many even better restaurants that soak up the clientele. This is not the case right now. Crepp is closing because everyone is abandoning good, quality food and atmosphere in exchange for French fries in a former casino.

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.