NOA Chef's Hall — Restaurant in Tallinn

We enjoyed a nice dinner here during our stay in Estonia. From start to finish, the meal and experience were great. The course menu focused a lot on smokey foods, which was something we enjoyed.

Upon entering, you are escorted into the restaurant through a hidden style door, which is neat and sets the mood for the evening. The first place you are taken is the waiting area where you are served your pre-meal appetizers.

The three appetizers are served on leafs that attach to a tree sculpture, which is neat. The three appetizers are Crab and 300, Smokey Beef Croustade, Choux and Truffle. All three dishes give you a hint as to what you can expect for your main course. The Crab and 300 is a nice seafood morsel that has a lovely seafood flavor. The Smokey Beef was another hit, a nice soft crust with an amazing sauce with the beef inside. The truffle was just as good as the other two, a good flavor of truffle that wasn't overpowering.

After this course, we were escorted to our first appetizer, the beetroot. Here, they introduce the staff, and you can watch as they prepare the beetroot. The preparation method makes it feel like you're chewing a piece of steak, and it was surprisingly close. The small cooking show was a nice addition.

Next, we were escorted to our seats where we enjoyed the rest of our meal. The bread course was good, the Koji butter and bread were simple, yet delicious.

The scallop was great, the accompanying garnish and vegetables were a great balance, and the scallop had a nice texture to it.

Next was the Artic Char, which was a great piece of fish. The sauce was a nice balanced of sweet, sour, and savory, which, for us, really added a nice level of flavor to the whole dish.

The next dish was a nice mushroom dish, Morels. The morels were cooked nicely and accompanied by an amazing brioche to soak up the truffle sauce. The balance of flavors was great, and we enjoyed this dish a lot.

The Twist Royal was a great palette cleanser, a nice citrus sorbet with champagne poured into the glass.

The second to last menu item was the Wagyu. Unfortunately, this was the dish that lowered the rating to four stars. Having lived in Japan and my wife being from there, we have had our fair share of Wagyu. A5 Wagyu is supposed to be fairly marbled and tender to chew, yet this felt like it was just another steak. The flavor was good, but the texture and quality of the beef was far removed from what we are used to.

The Nashi Pear (fun name because Nashi is Pear in Japanese, so Pear Pear) was a simple yet well-balanced desert full of flavor. The last morsels were also all quite nice, and we're great to end the evening with.

The wine pairings were a hit, each wine was great on their own, and paired great with the food. Overall, we did enjoy our meal. The service was fantastic, and we loved...

Dear Lord. Where to even start. Someone has to explain to me why on earth they have a bib gourmand. It’s a mystery. It is like their restaurant manager is writing their own one star reviews. The menu is all over the place with zero conceivable concept. And I am no picky eater. Trust me. But I struggled to make it make sense and I tried. On top it is so windy inside because of the overly dramatic but poorly executed architecture that I wanted an actual blanket in august. On top of that they kept opening the door while banging it for no reason to make it even more uncomfortable. Our drinks took aaaaages and I had just no wine at all with the starter. Because of the chaotic menu and the lack of trust in the starters section (passion fruit in the ceviche, bbq sour cream with the trout) we ordered a pasta from the mains section after the bread course/starter as entree and were assured that wouldn’t be a problem and it would come before the mains. It’s not really necessarily very unusual in fine dining either you would think. When of course everything arrived at the same time, we didn’t get an apology but merely sharing plates to eat our pulpo nduja pasta with the halibut and duck. I mean… We then realized, that the only even remotely hot dish was the pasta while the sauce on the duck was actual cold and the duck and halibut overcooked. With combined 20 years of experience in hospitality at our table it was completely obvious that the pasta had been completely forgotten and the other dishes had been sitting there under the heating lamp except the sauce and simply shouldn’t have been sent out. But instead of acknowledging the mistake and fixing it the dishes were just sent lukewarm to cold and the wind did the rest to kill any flavors that could have been in there. And while our waiter was quite lovely in the beginning, how this issue was handled when we politely brought it up was mind-boggling. We weren’t offered any kind of compensation. The waiter after consulting with the restaurant manager for several minutes told us “the kitchen is dealing with this issue to avoid it in the future” while we were charged the full bill. Clearly the restaurant manager seems to think this is an acceptable outcome. I honestly can’t recommend this to anyone and even if the food had been warm, it would’ve been average at best. I’ll make you that pasta at any time. The view is not worth dealing with that. I’d rather eat a pizza at the beach with sand everywhere and wind blowing straight into my face. Even though I don’t particularly enjoy this...

NOA has their own personal Karen - and she’s the hostess.

Last week, December 4, 2021, at 14:30, I was in Tallinn - I barely stepped inside NOA and had my whole vibe dramatically killed by the lady.

I was reuniting with a close family member I hadn’t seen for 4 years - but NOA’s Karen was there and made sure to destroy our happy faces.

I believe in one of the 3 scenarios: she has a mental problem and wasn’t medicated that day, she’s racist and shouldn’t be at NOA her IQ is below average

I’m not sure which one applies.

What happened?

She didn’t accept my COVID certification from Spain.

The lady said, and I quote: “I’m speaking to you in English, but we are in Estonia, and here we speak Estonian.”

I hope they see in the camera her interaction with us. I literally said to my cousin, “let's see what racist Karen has to say, and we leave.” :)

She proceeded by saying that my proof of vaccination is in Spanish and, quote again: “I have no obligation to understand that it says you’re vaccinated. “

Disclaimer: My proof of vaccination has all the information necessary in Estonia or anywhere worldwide, vaccination lot, and everything. I used it in the past months for business trips to France and Portugal. In Estonia, my document has been accepted anywhere. I mean, this wasn't even a topic. Never ever dared to think about an adverse reaction to a COVID vaccination certification just because it’s from another country- just because it wasn’t a QR code. How weird!

But Karen… Karen is the law. Isn’t it?

She left a queue of coming people, waiting for her to stop talking. Deplorable scene.

By the time I started to feel sorry for her chaotic mind, then she calmed down and said that she would let us enter, but she wouldn’t accept it the next time.

Karen isn’t only the law - but also NOAs owner? :)

I laughed at the lady’s craziness at first, but deep down I was so disappointed . I had NOA marked as a “must visit” since 2017 right beside other already accomplished places like Adria’s restaurants, Davi Munoz’ Diverxo , 11 Mad in NYC and so on.

Maybe that’s why the food didn’t taste as good as it might be. She killed my vibe.

Aarina (?) was the waitress that served our tables. She was fun. We could see that she was busy, but she was the opposite of Karen and deserved...