The Best Places to Eat Near Vihula Manor Restaurant, by the Record
-
-
A lime-green clapboard house in a small coastal village inside Lahemaa National Park, Mere 38 is a seasonal restaurant that leans New England in look, fleece-covered chairs and a big terrace, while the menu goes its own direction entirely. Elk dumplings and butter chicken schnitzel on the same concise card gives you a sense of the vibe. Pine forests and Baltic air do a lot of the heavy lifting on atmosphere, with the kitchen handling the rest.
-
Exposed ducting and brick walls fill the old gatehouse of Maidla Estate, a detail that sounds incongruous until you're sitting inside and it clicks. SOO is a tasting menu restaurant in the Estonian countryside, the kind where local ingredients get rerouted through global technique, and both alcoholic and non-alcoholic pairings are on offer. Antique furnishings make the industrial bones feel less warehouse, more lived-in ruin. Getting here requires commitment, but that's rather the point.
-
-
An old farmhouse on the Taju Estate, east toward the coast, where the restaurant's name translates as "secret grove" and the setting does its best to earn that. Six tables get a 15-course tasting menu built almost entirely from foraged ingredients and lesser-used cuts pulled from the surrounding land and forest. The chef weaves childhood memories into the techniques, which is either very charming or a lot of pressure on a mushroom, depending on your mood.
-
-