Address: Pikk 16, Tallinn
Website: http://www.kalev.ee/maiasmokk/kohvik
Style: Estonian
Price: $
Yes! I'm finally down to my Estonian Cake Tour... well, to be fair, as much as I would have liked to travel to at least one other city, time and money didn't permit it, so it should actually be called the "Tallinn Cake Tour". Nonetheless, speaking purely of bakeries and hunting for treats, I had an amazing time in Tallinn. :D I brought a whole list with me, and I actually didn't go to any of them, but you wouldn't believe how much fun I had with the places I chanced upon along the way. Actually, I was a tad disappointed with the list I *did* bring along, since within Old Town itself, there are tons of tiny cafes, serving coffee and cakes, but there are in reality not that many "bakeries". These cafes are fairly expensive and, even if a majority do have treats baked on site, their variety isn't that big and, trying to be fancy, tend to be more French in style and not the traditional Estonian goodies I'm after. But I managed. ;P
Three years ago, while on my trip to Finland, I popped over the strait to Tallinn for a total of 2 1/2 hours. This was pretty much a mad dash through old town with a stop here, the most obvious of cafes and also the oldest. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous place that looks like it came straight from Vienna: dark panelled walls, vaulted ceilings over the mirrored seating area with uniformed workers running back and forth with coffee spiked with Vana Tallinn liquor. *sighs* This being before Cake Tour days (though I did a pic of my purchases once back in Helsinki), a priority was to get back here. It's not that hard to find this place and so I came here on my very first evening. Ah, the same giant, delicious array of goodies from before! And, oddly enough, (and here's the really amazing part!) this cafe is amazing value. From my searches, it's by far the cheapest cafe in Old Town, with cake slices under 1,50 euros and baked goods under 1euro and that Tallinn coffee being, I believe, 3euro (a couple in front of me ordered two coffees and cakes and paid around 7 euros)! I thought this was a standard price, but once you venture into the other places and discover the almost Parisian prices, you come to realize Maiasmokk is very well priced. O_O
Anyways, I started with the same thing I took the first time, purely for nostalgia's sake (and because it was good and a bit of classic in terms of Finnish baking): the Aleksanderinkook (this will be a spelling mistake, I know... I only know that it's supposed to translate to "Alexander cake") (1,10 euro), two layers of dense, hard dough made of powdered almonds with a thin layer of jam in between them and then an icing-glaze on top. It wasn't at the peak of its freshness (a guidebook made a joke about the cakes tasting like they were baked on opening day), but it wasn't as bad as they made it sound. If you've tried anything almond-based (macarons, for example), you know they won't last long. It was a little crumbly, but again, I still enjoyed it!
And then, *gasps, shrieks* this is the one really amazing thing about Estonian baking: they've got poppy seed buns! *-* Yes, it's unbelievable and, what's more, it was 60 cents! They seem to resemble German poppy seed buns the most (I do have a few pics from my trip to Germany, but it's so old that I'm not sure if it's worth posting it up): soft, freshly baked (as opposed to their cakes XD) dough wound around a generous amount of whole poppy seeds and with a hint of lemon marmalade. Mmmm, so good! I could have had this every day I was here (even though I did want to try other things) and it definitely turned out to be the best poppy seed I had in Tallinn (to be fair, I only had two). But man, looking at these pictures again makes me want one of these again.I swear, if you're in Tallinn's Old Town, you can't not go to Maiasmokk. ;D End verdict.
Rating: ***1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment