The home of good coffee is in Kadriorg

To be more precise, at 13 A Koidula Street where Gourmet Coffee just recently opened its cafe. One new café in a large city should not change the overall picture too much, but still. Now we have a café in Tallinn where the best experts use the best coffee beans to make coffee.

The word “best” has recently lost much of its value. Various coffee sellers also use this word a lot. Still, in order to make a choice, it is important to know that 95% of coffee beans are sold on the market where quality is carefully checked, but it never reaches the level of the rest 5% which is sold for a several times higher price long before reaching the market.

The best coffee beans for making coffee are like the best grapes for wine. They grow on special coffee trees in special plantations. As each coffee tree has beans of both higher and lower quality, the best beans are picked only by the most skilled workers. And then it is the turn of equally experienced buyers who often buy up the best beans by auction and deliver for roasting.

These coffee bags are the first to catch the eye when entering Gourmet Coffee café. It is the best first impression, showing that the quality coffee beans are there and roasted right here in small quantities in order to always provide the utmost freshness of the coffee sold.

And there is more! People with an extra sensitive taste can also have their personal coffee mix roasted for themselves as the smallest quantity roasted at a time is less than one kilogram!

The roasted beans are ground and the competition for the best coffee provider begins. 

Now we come to the next important persons – the coffee makers. In this photo you will find two of the most recognized Estonian baristas Helger Aava and Marta Piigli. They demonstrate their skills of making Irish coffee at the Estonian Embassy in London to the local food journalists. Both of them are the world champions in making this coffee.

In general, Estonians are quite skilled at mixing the drinks. When counting together all the awards and titles, I dare predict that Estonians are better drink makers than, for example, cross-country skiers!

Unfortunately, we have one peculiarity compared to London. These title winners do not work behind the café or bar counters. Luckily, it is not the case with Gourmet Coffee café.

Gourmet Coffee is operated by Heili Politanov and Annar Alas. Their knowledge and skills are so valuable that they are often invited to be judges for various world competitions. Behind the café counter you will find Vadim Kõllomees (in the photo) – the barista with most competition experience in Estonia.

Everything here makes you feel as if it is better not to even ask the price of coffee in this café. You are not willing to pay this price anyway. No such thing! The price of the coffee sold here is not higher than the average in the city!

Going deeper in the details of coffee is practically the same as becoming an expert in wines. Not sure if it is worth the effort? But tasting the real quality from time to time is definitely not too much.

All the more that you can also buy the beans you like for making coffee at home. Indeed, the price of those beans is considerably higher compared to the special offers for mass produced coffee in supermarkets. On the other hand, the best is not meant to be slurped in litres.

It is surprising that the best part of the coffee world can be easily displayed on just two shelves. But as in a decent tailor shop, here you also have no need or opportunity to put everything on the shelves for having a look.

At the moment, the practice of drinking high quality coffee in Estonia is still on the level of drinking high quality wine 15 years ago. But at least we have made the first step.

You should also not set too high expectations. Gourmet Coffee Café is quite a clumsy name. The name itself tells you that opening one’s own café was not in the plans. It just had to be done for having a place where you can always get great coffee.

That you will get indeed. But as to the atmosphere, it first gives an impression of the tasting hall of a coffee seller rather than a cosy café expected in the atmosphere of Kadriorg. And this is exactly the purpose of Gourmet Coffee Cafe.