Barbarea — Restaurant in Tallinn

In summary, nice foods, great drinks, excellent service. If you're a local, I'd recommend going in to try it out for sure, but if you're just visiting, then I'd recommend looking around what else the city has to offer before making your decision.

The restaurant is located in an old industrial/factory area that has become another new modern playground for art and culture. It's in an old concrete building, but it looks nice inside with strong modern retro vibes.

They recommend sharing dishes and also recommended that we take multiple entrees for the two of us to share. We had three, the sourdough foccacia with olive oil, pappa al pomodoro with their crispy foccacia and the lasagne fritta.

Eating bread in a restoraunt is often better experience wise than at home even with the same ingrifi, though their olive oil could be a bit more flavourful and it could be nice to have some salt, pepper and or balsamic on the side too. The bread itself was nice, the sesame seeds on top being like glitter and getting everywhere. The pappa al pomodoro was nice. While it wasn't anything that blew me away, it was definitely a good snack, and the toasted bread was impressively airy and crispy at the same time. Lastly, the lasagne fritta was a cloud trapped in a crispy shell. The lasagne was so soft that it had no resistance. If it were on its own, I'd complain about it being overcooked, but the hard, crispy shell gives a nice contrast. However, the lasagne had such a light flavour of tomato with a gentle background of meat that the intense taste of the fried shell overpowered it in most bites. I wish the lasagne had a bit more kick to it.

For our mains, we had pork meatballs in a tomato sauce and lamb with a parsnip puree and timut pepper jus.

The pork balls were nice and delicate, with a surprisingly spicy sauce, though it was not too hot. The lamb tasted nice but could've been prepared better as there was still silver skin and some cartilage or dense fat, which was a bit annoying to chew through. Also, a better knife would be handy as it was a chore to try to cut through it all. The parsnip puree was rich and flavourful, while the jus blended in, though occasionally there was a unique flavour that stood out. I suspect it was an ingredient of the puree.

I wish the main dishes had either more substance or lower prices. To me, it felt like the entrees and mains all felt the same size. This probably stems from the shared food design of the menu, which technically does not categorise dishes as entrees or mains, but I imagine for simplicity, they are explained as such.

Lastly, we had desserts, which were based on pastries made in the excellent downstairs pastry (Karjase Sai). We had a monkey bread tiramisu and a bread pudding made with their croissants. They were very nice, though definitely still rich dishes which took some effort to finish after a long dinner.

Throughout our stay, the service was very nice, our waitress was very professional, friendly and helpful with any questions we had. The service was also fast and thoughtful.

Lastly, we had a glass of their bubbly and their house wine. They were both on the gentle/mild side, which I liked. The champagne had a wonderful orange tint and was a joy to enjoy as a welcome to our dinner. The house wine was surprisingly mild, reminding me more of a cider rather than a wine. While it did not have a strong aroma for me, it at first had very gentle sulfur like smell, which expanded to something akin to an apple orchard. The flavours were just akin to a gentle apple juice.

Overall, it's a nice place which seems well ran and thought out. While it has its unique characteristics, it does share a pool with many great and wonderful restaurants in the city, making it hard to recommend it above others, though that does not mean it's not a great option to visit for a date or a dinner. Just a heads up, it can...

Went with a group of 15 people, and overall experience was very negative.

First the booking: we booked for 15 people, and only once we arrived there we discovered that we could NOT decide what each one would order, but instead they were bringing the whole menu in smaller portions at the tables, so everyone could share everything. Extremely disappointing, as we had also a few vegetarian/vegan people that could basically eat nothing from their menu and left restaurant at the end still quite hungry.

Extremely overpriced and overhyped for most of us: food was not bad but very average taste and nothing special.. Very far from the price it's charged. Portions are quite small also.

Service time has been very slow, even though the restaurant was half empty when we were there. I think it took more than 1 hour to start bringing the first portions, and even between different servings at times we had to wait 20-30min.

On the final bill, we saw they charged for 1 extra person than the number of people there (ie. 15 instead or 14), and we mentioned this to them as a mistake maybe: they said that this was correct, as they prepared food for 15 and so it didn't matter how many of us showed up, they would still charge for the entire amount of people!! First time I've experienced this from a restaurant, and quite shocked given it was literally 1 person out of a 15 people reservation. Considering the over priced menu, felt like an extra scam.

Waitress were kind and friendly instead, the only positive note of the evening.

Will definitely NOT recommend. Will definitely NOT...

We enjoyed a great evening at Barbarea with a group of 4 friends. The waitress who was absolutely fantastic with recommendations, welcoming and attentive, introduced us to the menu’s sharing concept where the menu is made up of snacks, appetizers, pizzettes and desserts. The part about sharing was taken slightly too far as we only got one slice of sourdough with the burrata& wild garlic dish we ordered. Considering that we were four people, it was rather awkward to be tearing off a small piece of bread each in order to try to enjoy our dish. There was also no bread served for the table which was a real pity because some of the other dishes had dips and in general would have been really nice with some bread on the side. I found it very strange, especially considering that they have a bakery downstairs and bread should be their pride and glory.

I really enjoyed the tomato salad with lemon ricotta; The pizza was nicely done and the tomato sauce was packed with flavour ; Chicken tacos were real crowd pleasers - the meat was soft as butter and the flavour combos worked well; For dessert we tried the baked bread dish with crème anglaise - unfortunately it was a bit dry and just not that enjoyable of a dish.

2-3 small dishes per person + pizza or pizzette for the table should be enough to feel full and can expect to cost around 30-40€ per person on the food alone. The staff is very knowledgeable about their natural wines but can also offer some great cocktails. Recommend to book your table in advance as the place is...