Bruxx - New Belgian — Restaurant in Tallinn

We booked a table for two for a birthday on Saturday through the online booking system. A very convenient form, you can add a comment to the reservation (we added a preferred seating location and upon arrival we were seated at this table).

The service was fast, correct and without excessive waiting. The waiter took a good look at the menu and checked whether everything was in order, but without being overly intrusive. Quite quickly after ordering, the cocktails were brought and after some short time they were followed by the first courses.

Drinks were pleasant and refreshing (Cherry sour with also sourness, the sweetness in it is due to the airy foam on top and 3 cherries strung on a skewer and soaked in syrup).

Beef tartare turned out to be heavily “clogged” with sauce, because it's served already mixed with it - cause of this, the taste of the meat fades into the background. Egg yolk, truffle sauce and capers taste good. The sauce is really tasty, but the presentation makes it a little difficult to enjoy the taste of the beef itself. The tartar comes with airy espuma and croutons with pieces of garlic (if you put tartar on them, the taste of the meat is completely lost).

Potato waffles with roast beef and paprika mayo were served in neat triangular canapés with toppings on them. But, unfortunately, the cheese sauce that covers the waffle makes the snack taste very similar to pizza. The rich cheese sauce overpowers the taste of the thin slices of roast beef.

Entrecote with gratin, Shimeji mushrooms and pepper sauce left mixed impressions. The pepper sauce is very salty. At the same time, the potato gratin is unleavened. But if you take a piece of meat with sauce without gratin, then due to the excess salt, you really want to drink it right after. The pepper sauce itself is very interesting and spicy in taste, there are “peas” of pepper, be careful, it can be spicy! Perhaps, instead of adding so much salt to the sauce, you could sprinkle a small mound of coarse sea salt nearby or sprinkle it over the entrecote. The meat itself is tender, 2 cm thick, medium-done, cooked to high quality using the sousvide method.

Ossobuco alla Burgundy with Padron peppers is a dish a-la goulash made from stewed beef. The beef is soft, falling off the bone well, complemented favorably by a rich, thick sauce with small chopped and individual peppers up to 5 cm in size and a spiciness of 2 out of 10. The dish is hearty, the portion is large, count on your strength. The only thing I missed with this dish was a little toasted bread on the outside and fresh inside (but not the kind of croutons that are served with tartar) to create a contrast in the difference in texture: soft meat, fibrous peppers, liquid sauce and the characteristic crunch of toasted bread.

Also we decided to try dessert and our choice fell on a chocolate sponge cake with walnuts, vanilla ice cream and caramel popcorn (it took a long time to prepare, for which they brought us a cup of fresh coffee as a compliment). In our opinion, this turned out to be the most winning dish of the evening and left the most vivid memories. The most delicate creamy mousse covering the chocolate sponge cake goes perfectly with the taste of the cakes, vanilla ice cream and caramel puffed corn. I wanted to ask for more of this dessert, even though we were already full by that point.

What’s the result: this is the second time we’ve visited this place, but this time it leaves two different impressions. On the one hand, this is excellent service, a convenient booking system, the waiters are well versed in the menu and do their job to the best of their ability. The establishment is very atmospheric, it’s pleasant to be there and you want to stay longer (we had dinner for 2.5 hours and didn’t experience any inconvenience). But this time there were questions for the kitchen. The menu has been redesigned and many items have been removed. Compared to our last visit, this time we did not have the “wow” emotion. It was tasty, it was not bad, but we remember that our last visit...

Just had the saddest, most flavorless meal I’ve had in 2023. Started with the muscles and frittes—half the muscles were dry and the other half were OK; neither had much flavor. The fries were luke warm and, again flavorless, not even salted; served without mayonnaise, which is most unusual. We’re they supposed to stand on their own? They seemed frozen.

My wife’s salmon was nicely cooked to medium rare but completely unseasoned. It was supposed to come with ratatouille, but it was served with couscous (poorly seasoned). My rabbit was luke warm and unseasoned served under a sad, lifeless over-reduced glacé. The ratatouille showed up on my plate, but bland. My wife finished her’s because she was so hungry, but my appetite couldn’t overcome the flavorless “food” on my plate.

Even the first draft beer I ordered tasted like the lines were in need of cleaning. The waitress didn’t even bother to ask why I didn’t finish it when I ordered another in a bottle. Indeed, the waitress never showed any care about providing service or ever checked to see if everything was acceptable.

My bottled beer and wife’s glass of Alsatian white were the only saving graces in what was otherwise an insult to good cuisine.

The kitchen clearly has no passion or pride in the taste of what they send out to customers. Granted, it all looked very nice and surely appears grand on Instagram.

All style no substance.

And for that I paid €95.

In a word: shameful.

Adding this to address the restaurant’s response:

Dear Bruxx social media manager,

Your passive aggressive response, which seeks to paint my wife and myself as somehow bizarre and picky in our tastes, is exactly what I expect from a pretentious establishment like yours.

If you consider adding salt to dishes to be a “personal preference”, why in the world would I ever want to return to your restaurant? Why would anyone want to eat there? We had numerous excellent meals in Tallin, as we have across the globe, that didn’t require customization to be great. Do better. Expect your chefs and servers to care. But maybe you can run a business successfully with customers who only care how their food looks on social...

We came as a family for a Christmas dinner to the restaurant in hopes of enjoying Tallinn for the holiday. We had a table reservation and communication with the restaurant was good until we arrive to the establishment. At the entrance, the hostess rudely asked us to take off our jackets multiple times and carry them upstairs where we could hang them in the rack located there. She gave us as an explanation that the kitchen is an open kitchen so we cannot cross the dining room and go upstairs wearing our jackets. Weird rule. As we are kindly taken to our table, after ordering our drinks and food, we waited for more than an hour for the food to arrive. Our small children got their nuggets first which was a nice plus. When finally the food arrived, the dishes were beautifully presented but unfortunately cold. Our medium and medium minus tenderloins with pepper sauce we’re served rare on the verge of raw and the rest of the dishes were also unfortunately served cold. As we had waited such a long time, we ate the food anyway as we we’re starving and didn’t complain although we should have. Cocktails were beautiful and tasted good. The waiter came once to ask if everything was ok but was not really paying attention to our table. When we asked for the bill, we asked to have the bill divided in 3 and received a blunt answer that it was not possible and that only one bill is possible. We asked again for the possibility to share the bill and we got the same rude answer that sharing bills is only possible for parties of 6 persons or less. An odd option for a restaurant that boasts being modern and proud of the chef’s menu as his name was mentioned on the menu. A beautiful restaurant with poor customer service, which eventually ruined the whole dinner experience. As the restaurant is one of the pricier options to dine in central Tallinn, the standard of the customer service do not meet the price of the food and as it is, offers poor value for money. From the beginning we did not feel welcome and cannot recommend this restaurant for...