We were looking for a nice place for dinner. There were a couple of internet suggestions very close to the hotel, and we decided to walk past them and check what they looked like. One of our potential top choices ended up being closed, so we went to another one. That one was the restaurant Holm located in the Lydia Hotel, and it turned out to be fantastic! In short, it was like in Peninsular when Vlad worked there, but for half-price. I should have figured out that this was a high-end place because I saw the menu online, but I forgot that we are in Estonia for a moment.
There was an option of a taster menu – a five-course dinner for the price of 53 euros, we asked whether the portions would be half-size, and when the answer was yes, we went ahead with this option. Unfortunately, I can reproduce all that was said by the waiter when he introduced each of the courses; I can only copy a very short description from the restaurant website.
Since I told them that it will be a non-alcoholic dinner, they started by offering us a special local quince soda, as they stated locally grown and produced.
A sample of pumpkin soup “on the house”House bread with somehow specially made butter The first appetizer was made of sunchokes (I believe it was a sunchoke puree), black truffles, and some nuts. I am not sure about which nuts and what else was there since the menu does not succumb to google translate 🙂 I didn’t find the right description of the second appetizer on their website, but from what the waiter told us and how it looked, it was a quail leg with green beans and lentils. The little crisp, we were told is made of the combination of seven grains which are “unique to Estonia”. Update: using the Google translate three times back and forth, confirmed – that was a quailThe first entree was some fish, most likely haddock with green peas and potato and dill creamRaspberry cocktailThe second entree was lamb with grilled cabbage and pistachio cream, and I don’t remember what was the rest :). I believe, that was the only non-local dish:).Dessert was a blueberry mousse (I do not know how they are making a mousse like that!) on a bed of once-again-didn’t-catch-what Petit fours: marmalade, mini muffins and megengues
The dinner lasted for about two hours, and it was just the right time:). One more thing we noticed when we exited the restaurant was a playroom:
I think it’s a great idea – kids can sit together with adults, but when they are bored, they can play.
And the perfect end of that day was skating! The skating rink by the Townhall was open till 10 PM, and I skated under these lights until the clock was playing nine, and then for another half-hour!
My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996.
I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future.
I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life.
As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.
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2 thoughts on “Tartu – Part 2”
I just wonder how you were able to move after so much food, to say nothing of skating.
Hettie's Reflections 
I just wonder how you were able to move after so much food, to say nothing of skating.
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These were half of the European portions, not American portions, I asked before we decided to go with this five-course meal 🙂
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