Rohelise maja pood ja kohvik – Viljandi (Estonia) en

The best “organic” coffee shop in Viljandi. It’s an incredible success, and well deserved: people come here just as much to eat than to buy products, in the quantities they want.

It’s a funny story: at first it’s a pharmacy run by a woman in Viljandi. Her daughter goes to the U.S. and marries a man who is also Estonian. The mother retires, the daughter comes back home with her husband and five kids. They live above the pharmacy if I understood correctly, and the pharmacy becomes a regular place of reunion for them and their friends, because they cook for everyone.

Then comes to the idea to open up a coffee shop, it works like magic, because the quality is always top notch, regardless of how busy it gets, the prices stay reasonable, and because you can also buy healthy ingredients there.

The pharmacy kept its bones, so the place has a lot of character.

The staff is all smiles and efficient, there’s a real family vibe here: the mother was a pharmacist, the daughter runs a restaurant where the food is good, so it runs in the family to take care of others.

I took the menu of the day.

Appetizer

Tomato soup, Sea Buckthorn juice

Mains

Chicken Salad

It’s one of the best bio plate of food that I’ve eaten in forever: there’s nothing more difficult than to make a salad without feeling like you’re a rabbit eating raw vegetables, healthy for sure, but doesn’t bring any pleasure to the palate, or that worse the salad is drowned in a dressing that is supposedly there to make it sexier.

Here, everything is perfect, the textures work in harmony, both contrasting and balancing each other, the vinaigrette is light but well showcased, and finally, everything was brought withing minutes of the order. 

I don’t remember the name of the dish that the person with me ordered.

Total success. I hopped on a bus right after, I was so happy, truly healthy food that was as delicious as it was beneficial.