Friday Morning(moving East and North)

So, a little more while I still remember.

This week’s been strange because my partner is away, staying with her mother, so I’m (generally) having to eat on my own – which is fine, but not as enjoyable. However, on Wednesday an old friend invited me round for dinner. She cooked Caribbean food, the main dish being curry goat with rice & peas. I’ve eaten this style of food in restaurants, but what a difference! Full of flavour and texture. Overall, a super evening, even though the cat was annoyed that I’d left him alone.

Anyway, on to Estonia and Tallinn. I’ve been here before for work, but only in the winter, so it was a bit of a shock to see so many tourists and the streets full of cafés. Not sure whether I preferred it or not, but it was very different. We ate in a number of OK places; the service in this part of the Baltic is a bit faster than Latvia and Lithuania, but still nothing to write home about.

On the first evening we went in search of a restaurant I remembered from 6 years ago: it was gone of course. Eventually, tired and hungry, we ended up at Old Estonia in the Town Hall Square. It was OK. The starter of blood sausages was good and the wild boar casserole that followed was fine, EXCEPT that it arrived while I was still eating my starter! Waiter was not really apologetic.

The high spot was eating at Balthasar which is a garlic restaurant (not unlike the Stinking Rose in San Francisco). We had garlic with everything, including garlic ice-cream for dessert. Fabulous. The main of reindeer steak (poor old Rudolf the red-nosed) was very good indeed and, surprisingly, the  service was prompt and efficient. This isn’t a cheap place to eat, but it is good. Last time I was here, it was almost impossible to get a reservation, now it’s less popular…

There are a lot of sights to see in Tallinn, we enjoyed being here.

 More to come: Finland next!

Thursday Morning (The Baltics, contd.)

Because I don’t really have time, and don’t want to bore you, I’m not planning on recounting all the meals I ate in the Baltics. However, a few stick in my mind so I’ll do a bit of a precis…

Vilnius
There was a fish restaurant – Zuvine – near our hotel that looked good, so we tried it on our second evening. It wasn’t the best experience. Service was slow (very slow, even for Lithuania) and we never got bread, though they tried to charge us for it later. The waiting staff were not very engaged and seemed to spend most of their time hovering around a table of wealthy (and very loud) Russians.
When we finally ordered, the dished we wanted were ‘off’ so we had to make substitutions. We then waited for 30 minutes for our wine to arrive, which t did after we reminded the waiter twice.
The starter of pickled herring was very good. The mains of Halibut with boletus sauce were very overcooked. Desserts were bland.
It was difficult to get our bill, difficult to get them to correct their errors and difficult to pay, we wouldn’t go there again and were quite disappointed.

The rest of the food in Lithuania was unremarkable, though edible and focussed on pork and potatoes – not a bad thing, really.

The food in Latvia wasn’t anything to write home about and service tended to be very slow and surly. One restaurant in Riga - Restorans "4Rooms" was, frankly, terrible except that the portion sizes were gigantic. For some bizarre reason, everything was served on skewers perched over wooden boards: I always wonder how these are cleaned and sterilised …

One high spot was eating at the ‘Daily’ restaurant below the Town Hall. It seemed to be a self-service cafeteria for the workers there, though anyone was welcome. Food was a little basic but great quality and cheap (we ate for about €5 each!).

In the days to follow, there’ll be a bit about Estonia and Finland. Bet you can’t wait!

It's been a while (sorry): Wednesday 15th June

Sorry it’s been a while, but we’ve been away and there’s much to tell…

We went on a tour of the Baltic capitals: Vilnius (Lithuania), Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia) and Helsinki (Finland). It was interesting and a lot of it was fun. Some of the food not so much.

We flew from Manchester airport as it’s a bit nearer home than Heathrow and the journey promised to be quieter (even the M6 is pretty calm at 05:00 on a Saturday morning). Everything at the airport went well, though the plane was delayed, right up to the moment when the aircraft stated its take-off roll. About 10 seconds into the take off, I felt the brakes come on and it was obvious that we were stopping!

The aircraft turned off the runway and stopped, with an announcement of ‘technical difficulties’. We were already late and – at this point – only had about 50 minutes to get through passport control and make our connecting flight at Helsinki. After a few minutes, the captain told us that a circuit breaker had blown, but that they’d run the checklist and everything was OK, so off we (finally) went.

They won back a few minutes on the flight, but we still only had 30 minutes from landing to take-off, so we weren’t that pleased to find that it was a bus transfer from the aircraft to the terminal. Nevertheless, we rushed through immigration (e-passports are great here) and charged through the airport to our departure gate with a few minutes to spare. The onward flight to Vilnius was uneventful, other than the cabin crew wondering why the flight was full and why it was mostly composed of Anglophones.

We were collected by tour guides at Vilnius airport and taken to our hotel in the heart of the old town: really quite picturesque and pleasant. 

We settled in and then went out to eat, picking a café in the town hall square. We ate zeppelins; these are enormous potato dumplings stuffed with sausage meat and served in a cream and bacon sauce – delicious, but very filling. We also ate a ham hock which was a gigantic lump of meat with boiled potatoes, all washed down with local beer.

More to follow ...