In Estonia, the Christmas meal is usually eaten on Christmas Eve – if not the evening of Christmas Day – and is a veritable feast of up to 12 courses. The huge platters of food you’ll find weighing down the table stem from a time when food was locked into the seasons: berries would be picked in the summer and made into jams for the winter, and autumnal mushrooms, grains and fruits would be pickled, fermented and preserved for later.
What you might not know is that these old-school methods are undergoing a revival in Estonian cuisine, that’s not dissimilar to (but tends to be a lot cheaper than) the new Nordic movement in Copenhagen led by the foragers supreme at noma.
Christmas dinner in Estonia most likely means hearty and filling fare, from verivost (blood sausage) to sauerkraut and pork – followed by sticky, dense gingerbread. And thanks to a rising sense of national pride in Estonia’s dining scene, you’ll find innovative takes on these classics in trendy restaurants in Tallinn and beyond. You might even spot Christmas trees on the menu – especially if you head to these two complementary businesses, in two distinctive areas of the country…
Read the full article on the ABTA Magazine website.