The Best Of Tallinn Is Outside The Medieval Walls

Medieval Tallinn is impossibly lovely—pastel-hued buildings, narrow church spires, timbered halls serving game meats and mead. If you go to Estonia’s capital—and you should—you’ll certainly see it.

Probably you’ll sleep in it. The Telegraaf Hotel is a particularly fine place to stay, with 83 comfortable rooms and an appealing thermal suite in the spa. It sits on a main street in the old city, in what was once the main center of communications. the telegraph office—the place where news traveled to and from. The place that connected people from far away, as today’s best luxury hotels continue to do. (It’s part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection for people who care about loyalty points and the like.)

But if you’re like me, you’ll go a bit bored of the old city, with its Medieval Times dinner theater-style restaurants, costumed waitstaff and amber-laden souvenir shops. It’s 2023. We don’t travel just to go to museums, no matter how beautiful, let alone theme parks.

When that happens, it’s time to leave the walls that surround the old city. “The real wherever” is a travel blogging cliché, but the parts of Tallinn where Estonians work, live and play are at least as interesting as the picturesque old squares.

While Estonia was a Soviet republic (against Estonians’ will) until 1991—the KGB museum in the agency’s former HQ atop the Viru hotel offers some good insight into this—modern Estonia considers itself a Nordic country rather than a “Baltic country,” a clumping that was manufactured in the 20th century. While its economy is vastly smaller, it seems to have more in common with Helsinki than with Riga.

In recent years, the country has encouraged startup entrepreneurs. “Unicorns” like Bolt and Wise were born here. It’s technologically advanced, and it was one of the first countries in the world to court remote workers with a digital nomad visa. (The Estonian winters appear to have kept demand at a manageable level.)

Influences of that are visible outside the historic center. The confectionery architecture turns to contemporary, a mix of bricks, glass, and steel, particularly in the residential buildings overlooking the sea. A good example is the Noblessner seafront quarter, an industrial district that was in 2020 awarded the title of Best Urban Regeneration. It’s home to places like the PROTO Invention Factory, a kid-friendly science museum that leans into virtual reality, and the Kai Art Center, a cultural complex in a 100-year-old submarine factory.

Noblessner is also home to some of the city’s most exciting restaurants. Matthias Diether’s 180° holds a Michelin star for its inventive tasting menus that include dishes like a tomato marshmallow with parmesan, hand-dived scallops with kohlrabi and sweetbreads, and pigeon with cauliflower and tarragon. Bonus points for the cheese trolley and creative wine pairings.

More casual is Lore Bistroo, whose partners Janno Lepik and Kristjan Peäske (a chef and a sommelier) have been in business for ten years with several restaurants around Tallinn. Michelin gave Lepik the Young Chef Award in 2022. Here, they focus on sharable comfort food classics with a twist, inspired by their world travels. Think scallops with Kalamatsi goat cheese, oven-baked leek with cashew cream and Jerusalem artichokes, and slow-cooked pork cheeks with creamy organic buckwheat.

Across town, on the other side of the old city, Talliskivi is another renovated industrial area that’s full of Estonian international restaurants—F-Hoone and the fully gluten-free Kivi Paber Käärid are especially popular—craft beer bars like Pudel and Põhja Konn, the Junimperium gin distillery, the Nudist sparkling fruit-wine bar, boutiques from independent designers, and cowork spaces where the members seem to enjoy outdoor table tennis on warm spring afternoons. Every European city seems to have one of these districts now, but Tallinn’s is exceptionally good.

It’s anchored by the Fotografiska, a branch of Sweden’s contemporary photography museum, where the exhibitions might include provocative new work by Andres Serrano and the eye-popping artifice of Miles Aldridge. Along with the art, the restaurant is a destination in its own right, a showcase for the “sustainable pleasure” of chef Peeter Pihel’s cooking. It holds a Michelin green star.

Even further afield, the moody dining room at NOA Chef’s Hall is the site of the city’s other (colorless) Michelin star, a showcase for the menu of chef Tõnis Siigur. Its casual sibling—just plain NOA, though it’s not very plain after all—is decorated like a beach house with a large terrace and serves a relaxed menu. The NOA redfish for two was a highlight of my week in Estonia: trout that’s been cured with salt, mustard and “a drop of vodka” served with garlic bread, trout roe, sour cream, dill and lime.

It wasn’t fussy, but it was perfectly done and carefully presented, with a flavor combination I’ve found nowhere else in the world. Kind of like Tallinn in general.

Getting there: Tallinn has an airport. But a better way to reach the city is via Helsinki. The new MyStar ferry from Tallink makes the journey in less than two hours. It’s quiet and smooth, with good seating, a sundeck, a variety of restaurants and cafés, and a business class lounge that puts most airport lounges to shame.