The sincere food and people of Mermer

Coastal villages are among the genuine and unique parts of Estonia. In every season and every weather. You do not have any acquaintances there to visit? Sure you do!

Meet her! This is Merrit. The hostess of the home restaurant Mermer. If you wish to eat dishes prepared by her, call her and agree on the date. You will be welcomed as long-time acquaintances. That’s how simple it is!

The most difficult part is finding the Kolga-Aabla village and Merrit’s house in it. The home restaurant does not grab your attention with neon signs and eye-catching road-signs. It is, after all, a place where people live. They make delicious food there and there is enough of it for others as well.

The home restaurant is a room that is called a kitchen-room in regular houses. A table awaits the visitors there. This is the only table at the home restaurant. The restaurant welcomes one group at a time. The most convenient size for the group is six people.

You have surely booked a table at a restaurant before. However, never before has the chef of the restaurant called you half an hour before the agreed time of arrival to make sure that you are on the right path and are going to arrive on time.

Such an inquiry is necessary in the case of Mermer because the visitors are always welcomed with warm buns, pesto, olives and other snacks. Jaan, the host, quickly tries to find out what drinks you prefer. There is no time to get the uneasy feeling that you are actually in the home of strangers.

At Mermer, the food is brought to the table on a big plate from which everyone can lift a suitable portion onto their plates. If the sea that comes up almost to the windows of the house has been kind to the fisherman of the same village, Merrit brings fish to the table.

This time it’s salmon. Since the fish is of a suitable size, the carpaccio tastes marvelous compared to the fish from a store. It appears that the life is not easy for fish outside the breeding farm. There is no fat whatsoever.

The lemon-orange sauce that the carpaccio is dowsed with clearly spells out that a lot more than simply slicing the fish can be expected from the hostess.

Merrit often treats her visitors to ostrich meat. Ostrich meat as a genuinely Estonian product sounds like a bizarre joke to foreigners. Actually, the bird farm is actually quite close and so the fresh meat is always available.

Today there is fried ostrich liver on a salad pillow on the table. It is best eaten pan-hot. One of the big advantages of a home restaurant becomes apparent. The stove is a meter away from the table. Food cannot be served any fresher.

And the liver does taste fresh and good. Just like it should be.

The main dish of this meal is roe’s strip loin with wokked vegetable and red wine sauce. Unlike the previous materials, more sophisticated culinary skills needed here. Roe deer meat always tastes kind of dull, no matter you cook it.

It’s the wokked fresh vegetables that give the portion necessary additional flavors. And the sauce! The promised red wine sauce is served in a small glass container and the grease that remained on the pan from frying the meat is poured on top of it. This double-sauce is good to the meat like butter to bread!

Merrit and Jaan are very sincere people. Dining at their place never goes by in silence. The food offered by them is equally sincere. If that can be said about food.

Our meal is completed with kama mousse. Even though Mermer was opened in early June, about 800 people have filled their stomachs there. Among them there is a strikingly large number of foreigners. And the foreigners always ask for something especially Estonian to taste. What else if not kama can we offer them.

Meal-time flies by at the beach house in Kolga-Aabla. Many chefs across the world live in the same house with their restaurant. However, these are not home restaurants. Keeping a restaurant at your own real home is a very unique activity.

Merrit and Jaan are unique people themselves. And eating at the home restaurant Mermer is a unique experience for both locals and foreigners. Visit the website  www.mermer.ee, look through the information available there and call Merrit’s number that you’ll find there.

It is so simple to get a unique experience!