The restaurant guide White Guide Estonia announced their recommended restaurants for 2023 this weekend at the grand gala event in Kultuurikatel. This is already the 8th time to recognise the best restaurants, having thus made an invaluable contribution to the development of the restaurant culture in Estonia.

Three of the restaurants opened successfully this summer in Viru Food Hall were included in the White Guide recommendations list in the category of Recommended level. White Guide assesses a wide range of aspects included in the experience of eating in a restaurant: gastronomy, quality of ingredients, presentation, concept, atmosphere, service and many other facets of the complete experience.

Harri Hanson, the founder of White Guide commented: “The recommended level is our most interesting level. Usually you cannot find there any restaurants in the classical sense, but places for eating featuring concepts that enrich and diversify our food landscape. Without these the Estonian food map would be much more monotonous.”

One of the restaurants recommended by White Guide is F.Burger – a burger restaurant for adults where the restaurant operators Dimitri Fomenko and Eva Hunt experiment with food that seems so familiar.

The White Guide jury was pleasantly surprised about the original interpretation of making burgers by F.Burger. “Instead of a burger with a beef patty you can also choose a burger with shrimp, trout or portobello mushroom. There are also burgers with an avocado or potato cutlet replacing the bun. And our restaurant serves lemonade or wine with burgers.”

Another restaurant in Viru Food Hall recommended by White Guide is SoShellfish – “Fresh seafood in an unexpected place”. White Guide commented its choice as follows: “Food Hall in Viru Keskus offers most diverse tastes in the very heart of the city. There are also some restaurants that you usually cannot find in food courts. Seafood bar So Shellfish offers fresh high quality seafood with champagne or a selection of wines. So Shellfish is characterised by its French ‘bon vivant’ approach with each meeting deemed worthy of a glass of bubbly, a couple of oysters or fresh tartar.”

The third recommended restaurant in Viru Food Hall is Stereo Streetfood that promises Estonians most authentic street food made with ingredients and spices brought directly from South America.

White Guide recommends Stereo Streetfood by saying: “Tiina Kõresoo is probably the best known restaurant operator in Estonia. She is not the kind that occasionally takes some friends for dinner in the restaurant. Quite the opposite, she is the kind that works all the time in one of her restaurants both during working and leisure hours.”

Stereo Streetfood is Tiina’s lifestyle restaurant. If you cannot find her in any of her restaurants, she is certainly travelling somewhere. No, not for fun, but for her work. In order to experience personally some rare exotic tastes and then offer them in her restaurants.

Stereo in Viru Keskus is a constantly changing set of tastes collected during Tiina Kõresoo’s various trips.  Served with drinks that were also mostly found on those trips. “With us you can travel far and wide without leaving the centre of Tallinn. Mushrooms, roots, but also cheeses and certainly drinks born from the southern sun and rich earth provide a warm contrast to our drizzly weather and offer a drop of southern lust for life,” says Tiina with conviction.

Photoes by Lauri Laan, Margus Johanson, Katrin Press, Kalev Lilleorg, Stereo StreetFood