Moon – Tallinn (Estonia) en

My Tallin gastronomic coup de coeur: reasonable prices, local produce, no sauces, no excessive cream content, a success.

This is a nice little story, I was walking in the Kalamaja area, because a lady I met at the Russian market told me there was a nice seafood restaurant at the Fish Market. But it didn’t work out, the Fish Market is only open a few days a week, it’s very small, and there’s only a small coffee shop beside it where you can get sandwiches, but the Klaus coffee there isn’t that good.

I ask a man in his 50’s, with a big stature, but a friendly face for directions. He was actually from Finland; he’s such a fan of Estonia, that he comes spend his vacations here whenever he can. He stays in a hostel and wanders, a really cool guy.

But the funniest thing about him was when I took out my Iphone to show him my list of restaurant notes, and he tells me: “wait up, I’ve got my old fashion list right here”, and doesn’t he just take out two folded pages full of names with annotations: the list of all the restaurants he wanted to try out in Tallin!

A complete undercover foodie. So we start chatting and share names on our lists. He was really curious about this seafood restaurant by the Fish Market, because he’d never heard about it. We went out exploring together in search for it, but never found it.

However, as we were looking for it, we walked by Moon, and he told me that this was a great restaurant, he liked it a lot. I had phut it on my list, but had thought it was too expensive; he tells me that at lunch there’s actually a really reasonable menu. While I stopped at Moon, he continued on his adventures.

It’s two feet away from the sea, in a cute little spot where Café Klaus is.

Once inside, there’s one room, then another, and after that, a courtyard. I, of course, wanted to go outside since it was so nice outside, but I waited so long for someone to come greet me that I got worried that they would forget about me outside, that the meal would be too long, so I just sat inside.

The staff is young. I have to admit that at first I was worried, I felt like I could easily be forgotten about in a corner, and that the service could be slow and unorganized. So I made sure to find the person that looked like they knew what they were doing and everything went very well.

There’s an à la carte menu, as well as a table d’hote-appetizer, main and dessert (?), if I remember correctly.

I asked the server for his recommendations, and explained right off the bat that I was a food blogger, and wanted to try what he thought was good.

I started off with a delicious local beer. They made me feel really at home, a water carafe with cucumber, some nice butter, that’s what happiness looks like!

I had opted for a fish soup for the appetizer, being at the edge of the Baltic it would have been sad to pass it up.

Following was the main, a nice ground beef with a good sauce, nothing revolutionary or exotic, but it was well done, not fatty, overall a nice main for a dismal price ( 5 or 6 euros I think).

He suggested that I try this spicy local mustard, which was awesome!

A nice espresso to finish up!

14,50 euros, fantastic!

In my notes I wrote:

“Very good food, service is a bit unorganized on weekends and nights before holidays. Precise cooking, awesome table d’hotes, and you can go walk along Kalamaja Port after.”