Cooking local, going global

The food rations and bland food of the Soviet era, in what is today Estonia (www.visitestonia.ee) — a new northern European country formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 — don’t seem that long ago, but thanks to the hard work and inspiration of a handful of enlightened chefs, this small country is now one of the most happening food destinations in Europe.

Things can change and they can change fast. If someone had said just a few years ago that the world’s best restaurant would be serving up turnips, seaweed and dandelion leaves on the menu, you’d have been forgiven for raising your eyebrows to the roof.

If you’d then heard that the world’s hottest culinary destination was Copenhagen you would have been easily forgiven for laughing them out of the kitchen. Both of course came to pass and the now world-famous restaurant Noma in Copenhagen has been voted the Best Restaurant in the World in the Pellegrino Guides three years running since 2010.

So don’t be too surprised when you hear that the new gastronomic hotspot is Tallinn in Estonia. The savvy chefs and food providers have taken a leaf out of Denmark’s book and are serving up locally produced, foraged and often wild food, which is getting rave reviews.

Forget butter reductions, heavy foie gras covered with cream sauces. New dishes include smelts — a local freshwater fish — pesto made from wild herbs, smoked fish and desserts featuring freshly foraged blackberries.

Cooking methods look towards New Nordic Cuisine (NNC) for inspiration, and in Tallinn you’ll be treated to not only to delicious food but also delightful restaurant interiors and spot-on service. It’s this perfect combination that is attracting “those in the know” and will establish Tallinn as a culinary hotspot.

But perhaps you are thinking, what’s a former Soviet satellite got to do with Nordic food values? Well it’s not as strange as it sounds. Tallinn is only 88km from Helsinki and there are many shared values between Estonia and its Scandinavian neighbours. They all enjoy long summer days with over 16 hours of sunlight, which can be used for trips to the country to take part in foraging expeditions.

Winters are similar too across the region, with temperatures dropping to below freezing. This is the perfect opportunity to spend long nights in restaurants and bars enjoying food around a roaring fire. Estonia also shares centuries of history with Scandinavia. It makes perfect sense to align themselves with Europe rather than Russia. Since 2004 Estonia has been a member of the European Union and has the euro as its official currency.

Life in Estonia has changed dramatically since the days of communism. Under Soviet rule there was virtually no food in the shops and what was on the shelves was limited. Many products were almost impossible to obtain.

People look back with grim memories to the Soviet days. “There were depressingly empty shop shelves and what you could hope for if you were lucky were a few jars of pickled gherkins,” says Pille Petersoo a food writer and a founder of the blog (nami.blogspot.co.uk), where she posts food information and recipes.

As a result of her blog she has become somewhat of a local celebrity and her innovative recipes such as cardamom panna cotta with seabuckthorn juice and rhubarb and rye bread soup highlight perfectly the perfect marriage of cooking and creativity in Estonia.

At the centre of this culinary revolution is Moon (www.kohvikmoon.ee), a restaurant that should be on every foodie’s radar. It’s housed in the up-and-coming neighbourhood of Kalamaja in Tallinn, an area where young artists, upwardly-moving professionals and musicians hang out.

“Many of our guests are interested in organic food, farmers’ markets, bread-making and food foraging,” explains Jana Zaštšerinski, owner and sommelier at Moon. “People love talking about food and recipes. It’s suddenly cool to be a foodie,” Jana explains. “The restaurant scene and the way business has escalated has had that positive effect on people.”

While Estonian cuisine embraces the values of NNC, it is still a drop in the ocean when it comes to global food culture and values, explains Dimitri Demjanov, founder of the Culinary Institute of Estonia and owner of Gloria, (www.gloria.ee), one of the oldest restaurants in Tallinn.

“We have had to learn fast and, thanks to the initiative of many young people, things are changing at a rapid pace,” he says. Dimitri has devoted his life to food and restaurants. Gloria offers within its elegant interior authentic flavours such as herrings with roast beetroot and wild pumpkin soup.

In 2010, to show his support for the restaurant industry Dimitri, organised a conference in Tallinn that explored Estonia’s evolving role within the greater NNC movement. Although those where fledging days, among the prominent speakers was Claus Meyer, the co-founder of Noma in Copenhagen, who was there to speak and read out a manifesto regarding NNC and gave his approval as Estonia embraced the philosophy.

It seems that all of Estonia is ready to take up the challenge and immerse itself in NNC. “Estonians are naturally inventive when it comes to foraged foods,” Dimitri says. “They love using forest berries, dandelions, ground elder and wild garlic. Food collecting is a popular pastime for people of all ages.”

There is also a long tradition of grow-your-own, preserving, drying and smoking to keep seasonal foods on hand throughout the year. These were tasks that young people helped their grandparents with years ago and are now very much back in vogue.

Estonian chefs are focusing their menus on indigenous ingredients combined with local tradition. Good examples, and ones you will find in most restaurants, are buckthorn juice, lingon berries and wild mushrooms.

Most of these items feature on Moon’s menu and Head Chef Roman Zaštšerinski adds to this with local fish from the market and beef from the nearby island of Saaremaa.

“We try to source ingredients from a 10km radius. The essence of Estonia’s cuisine comes from produce sourced from its hundreds of small islands,” he reveals. “Due to their remoteness they have been less affected by urbanisation and offer us wonderful opportunities for gathering ingredients.” Chef Roman stresses that cooking with NNC values is all about natural ingredients and simplicity.

Moon is a restaurant that happily acknowledges its past. Chef Roman is of Russian stock and he effortlessly combines elements of Russian, Estonian and NNC cuisine in his menu. Watch out for buckwheat blinis with whitefish roe and beef tartar with Georgian adzika — a spicy paste. Both dishes combine new ideas with local values.

Cementing the food experience in Tallinn are restaurants that have taken some inspiration from even further afield. For example the recently opened Korean restaurant Gotsu creates dishes such as Kilu Kimpab, an authentic rice roll filled with locally sourced sprats — a less salty and more aromatic type of anchovies.

Across town there is the popular cake and pastry shop Heidi Park, run by an enterprising American by the same name. It’s become famous for its fusion cakes, combining American recipes with Estonian ingredients. A must try is coffee cake with Vana Tallinn — a sweet fruit syrup made in Estonia. “The future of Estonian cuisine is to showcase local cuisine and fuse it with international cuisine,” muses Park.

One of the most endemic ingredients in Estonia is kama. This flour made from roasted barley, wheat and rye, resembles oatmeal in texture and is pretty much a national food in Estonia. Under communism it was sometimes used as a substitute for chocolate due to its nutty flavour when roasted.

You can still get kama-flavoured sweets in many shops around Tallinn. Restaurants too are using kama flour in their recipes. At Neh (www.neh.ee) which focuses on using traditional ingredients as well as products from the Nordic islands, the humble flour has been elevated to the high standards of the turnip and seaweed at Noma in Copenhagen. They use it in delicious dark and light breads as well as in soups and dumplings. Kama has even found its way into a special version of crème brûlée

Five years ago, chefs in Estonia where discovering molecular cuisine, but today they are turning back to their roots and to the land and sea surrounding them for inspiration. They know what nature has to offer and how to make the most of it.

Scott Adams is a Madrid-based freelance writer