ANNO, Home restaurant & Wine Corner — Restaurant in Tallinn

Ironically their website says “Come with friends or arrange your own private party just like you are at home”

We couldn’t have felt more unwanted sadly.

My wife and I booked with two other couples for a Saturday night at 5pm we had our very well behaved and no stranger to restaurants 3 year old in tow.

It all went downhill from the moment we sat down, zero drinks offered. This maybe could be forgiven given as we were still waiting on people to arrive. The next error was being rushed into ordering. The amount of groaning and panting from the owner because we had not decided in 90 seconds was almost insufferable.

We all ordered mains (I personally didn’t have to time to even look at the starter menus) this seemed to annoy the owner very much.

We also asked about a kids menu, the owner looked surprised. Lol. He didn’t bother to try and help, we would usually be offered some form of simple pasta and maybe offered a smaller portion of one of the mains. Nothing. This is the first time in many visits to Estonia and most of the world this has happened. My wife stepped in and enquired about the Risotto for our son, the owner bluntly stated its for minimum of two people. She gave up her original choice and ordered for her and the small one. We are now starting to get rather annoyed with the rudeness of this restaurant. It’s rice.

I also tried to ponder the wine menu, but again this was much to the frustration of the owner as he just wanted that menu back ( again huffing and puffing ) he did in the end begrudgingly let me keep the menu. Two mins later when I let my guard down the menu was sneakily taken from me. No wine for me .

We ate our mains and everyone seems to like them. My lamb was very very good. Credit where credit is due.

Desert ordering time. “Do you have ice cream for our son” I can’t recall the exact answer but was along the lines of no/ we will check. That’s fine we ordered the pana cotta on the provision of no ice cream. Both came. (Now I must add I’m British the others are all Estonian, language barrier is not a problem here) here we go again, the owners eyes must be tired by now after all the eye rolling and he must be running out of breath with all the huffing and puffing. He rudely stated he can’t take the panna cotta back, fine we will keep both. He then slammed the ice cream back down. Now the rudeness is actually getting amusing.

They think it’s all over! It wasn’t. We asked to split the bill. Apparently this was the first time in the history of getting the bill this has been asked.

Wow. I only write reviews for very good or very bad. The latter applies here.

In the restaurant and service industry your one free commodity is politeness and customer service. You can offer this for the amazing price of 0. You may have the best and most expensive produce on the planet but you won’t survive acting like this. Estonia will be locked down in a few weeks like the rest of Europe. Anno should be hoping for repeat business as for when they will be able to reopen again. Sadly it won’t be from...

I sent this email directly to the owner following our disappointing experience last week, giving the owner opportunity to reply. In the absence of a response I am posting it publicly.

As you know from earlier emails, my husband and I visited your restaurant this time last year and we had a truly outstanding and memorable meal. We have just re-read the glowing review we wrote following it. This is why we were so keen to rebook this year and introduce our family to somewhere special on the eve of the Ironman in which our son is competing tomorrow.

We are rarely together as a family, living as we do in Copenhagen, Portugal, London and the north of England so tonight was supposed to be a very big treat and special celebration.

From the beginning we all felt uncomfortable with your attitude when we refused the bottle of champagne you offered. You were very slow to then take our drinks order and actually walked away whilst we were in the middle of ordering, leaving our son requesting his drink to the back of your head. When the beer our son-in-law ordered exploded over the floor, instead of replacing it with a new one you served him a part-filled glass.

Although the food was as delicious as we had remembered, the service was disappointing and discourteous. The waiter cleared our main course plates away whilst my husband was very clearly still eating. You stretched across my husband to remove a wine glass instead of discreetly removing it from his right-hand side. We then waited 40 minutes for our desserts and our enquiry about them was met with a dismissive "in a minute". When they eventually arrived they were incorrect. My son had clearly ordered the panacotta but instead of accepting your mistake you argued that we had misordered. Not only was this discourteous and incorrect (all 6 of us remembered the order; indeed, we had agreed that I was going to share the panacotta with him) you complained that it would take a long time to bring him a replacement dessert.

If we were in fact mistaken about querying the 2nd bottle of sparkling water which appeared on the bill it was because we had ordered another to have with our dessert which never arrived.

The most upsetting and disappointing aspect of the evening was your arrogant attitude throughout it and your unwillingness to accept responsibility or to apologise when mistakes were made.

When my daughter tried to talk to Anna on our way out, complimenting her on the food but complaining about the service, she literally walked away from her and started talking to a member of staff. Such incredible rudeness.

Looking at other recent reviews it appears we are not alone in feeling uncomfortable and unwelcome in your restaurant. We shall certainly never be returning nor will we be recommending you to our friends who may visit Tallinn in the future. We will sadly remember our family evening together at your restaurant for all the wrong...

Great little restaurant with big potential. It's definitely worth going, but for 5 stars on a top level there were some details that need to be refined. Let's start with the food. We took the 6 course menu and for me 3 of the 6 courses stood out. The other half was missing the same kind finesse and didn't excite me. The starter and main with white fish didn't deliver and defined flavors. I would say it was due to the fish that didn't taste a lot and no sides or sauces with complementary flavors that would make it more exciting. Both dishes were boring. Same with the roe deer filet. It surprised me hot it had basically no game taste and was served in a classic way. The port wine sauce was lagging strength, which could have added more balance. The smoky eggplant filet in controversy that we had prior was an exciting art piece with a deep profile of flavors. The best dish of the menu to me, that made me expect the menu to continue in a similar exciting path of flavors. The duck consomme was excellently executed with distinct flavor.

The desert was a 2 in 1. That means 2 courses on one plate. One of the two being a chocolate truffle. I would say it's far fetched to say a chocolate truffle alone is a whole course. I would rather say it's a 5 course menu or serve it separately with a complimentary hot drink. It left kind of a disappointing feeling of being cut short by one course. To me if it comes on one plate, it's one course.

The service was mostly professional and fast. We were greeted at the door and seated straight away. Every course was explained in detail and perfect English. One thing that I can forgive, but from a professional point of view isn't correct to me is taking the plate from the table when someone else at the table is still eating. You have to wait until everyone has finished the course, before you clean the table, otherwise it brings restlessness to the table.

The house from outside looks inviting. The ambient suits the concept of the restaurant. It leaves a homy feeling like, sitting in a nicely classic decorated, but not old fahioned living room with a view in the kitchen from tables. Not many tables, very cosy.

All in all I hope this critic will be heard and I'm looking forward to see the improvements...