Ertlio Namas — Restaurant in Vilnius

Im a bit confused why this place has such great reviews. As a fine dining experience it was rather lack luster.

While nothing was bad but nothing was really great either.

We had the 4 meals with 4 paired wines. As start the completement from the chef was small pierce of bread with butter. While a fine piece of bread it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a complement from a chef when bread brought to the table is a standard at any restaurant.

All the rest of the dishes while pretty looking lacked much interesting flavors. Lot of effort was made to make things look interesting, such as vegan caviar, but yet lacked really flavor nor the caviar pop.

The middle soup while flavorful didn’t really have finesse. Good soup dish.

The main dish was standard Beatroot, sausage and a small pease of slightly over cooked meat. Nothing wrong with any of these things but nothing special again.

Desert was tasty 👍

The wine tasting didn’t really match to food flavors at all. First of all the amount given was so small that it barely had enough to taste it properly nor enough for the dish. Maybe 8ml at max. While all the wines themself were excellent wines and of great quality they had little to nothing to do with the dish. The flavors didn’t complent the dishes in any way but more like over run the palet covering the flavor of the food completely. Usually the idea is that the drink brings out the flavor an adds character this was more like washing the foods flavor away.

The service was ok and most the time rather un attentive. It was bit hard to hear the waiter tell what we were having. Between the first dish and second dish it took almost 30min and I happened to ask if we could get a little top up of the wine while we wait. He immediately went to punch in the request as extra order. Also finally when the food came he started telling us what we were having, maybe interesting but could of easily filled the wait time with the stories instead. The other table that was there seemed to have equally slow service while we had two dishes they had none.

Yet again as standard restaurant experience it would of been all ok. But as as fine dining experience that is on the expensive end it really did not impress. We really wanted to like the experience, but just none of the bits went together. Maybe the flavors just weren’t for us, but even still the finesse for a fine dining price...

We came here on Christmas Eve to try a set of 12 degustation courses with Lithuanian traditional Christmas food. The table was reserved a month before and on this day they served only one menu. However, it took us almost 4 hours to finally get the last piece of the set. Most of the time we have just waited for the food in the cellary with no waitress nearby. A set of 12 courses is just a joke. At the beginning, our glasses were filled with assumably some tap water which had some chemical smell and taste. After waiting for 40 minutes we got three first dishes: two types of quite common bread, mini bun with chanterelles, and local drink also made from bread. Nothing special, I would say below average. After another 30 minutes we got two micro sandwiches with herring. Again nothing special. We waited another 30 minutes to get the traditional porridge which had no taste at all, I would say uneatable. Now imagine our feelings: this is a Christmas Eve time, we spent 2 hours waiting for degustation amount of common bread, porridge and herring.

During next two hours, with the same ridiculous waiting time we got three vegan dumplings (worse than in regular stores), local beetroot soup (finally good taste, but very little amount served in a big flat plate...), and a cod (good one). For dessert we got small buns with cranberry jam (very dry and almost no jam inside), cookies with poppy seeds served with plant milk (disgusting taste), and kisel (common drink).

I understand that traditional food is not a high kitchen, but when you visit such places you expect the recipes would be adapted and served in accordance with the place and time. But it is very dissappointing coming to a restarunt and spend 4 hours (the initial offer said that the whole menu will take up to 2.5 hours) to get very common food.

Resuming, we have lost 4 hours of Christmas Eve time and paid 150 euros for the degustation of bad food, unfriendly service,...

Unfortunately my meal at Ertlio Namas left something to be desired. I ordered the 7 courses with wine pairing. For a meal that was 100 USD I had high expectations. I was disappointed to find out the for two of the seven courses, one was bread and butter and one was a piece of chocolate.

While I appreciated the artistry and thought behind the dishes with their accompanying stories told by the waiter, with the exception of the dessert and the cheese plate, they were not delicious. Almost all of the courses were puréed, minced, or turned into gel so as to have the consistency of baby food and could have been eaten by someone with no teeth.

For the first course of bread and butter, I have eaten better bread from the supermarket. The second course of a cucumber honey gel had an unappetizing texture, and I did not finish it. The third course of beaver pate while plated beautifully, had a very strong taste, did not pair well with the raspberry jam, and I could not finish it. Maybe if the course had been accompanied by the pate it would have been okay, but it was overpowering being the entire dish.

For the next course, the soup broth was pleasant, but the other elements were too deconstructed to be practically eaten as a soup. The beef roulades was the best course flavor wise, but again, I was turned off by it also being a minced consistency. For dessert, the ice cream was quite good, but I was disappointed that the last “course” consisted of just a piece of chocolate. I will say that the wines paired with the meals were great.

I left the meal feeling still hungry and that the experience was not worth the price. While I can say the meal was interesting, it was not delicious, and I probably would not recommend this restaurant to others. At the beginning the waiter said they were trying to prove that Lithuanian food wasn’t just potato pancakes and sour cream, but I found myself wishing I had eaten...