Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Ryumka




This should be my last post. There is nowhere to go from this point on. The search is over. Yep - over.

Ryumka is most definetely the worst restaurant in Tallinn, it is the worst restaurant in Estonia and quite possibly the worst restaurant in the whole wide world ... and I've been places. Really bad places. Some so bad that the visit turned out to be a lot of fun. That was not the case with this one - RYUMKA. A Champion of bad intentions and even worse food-service combo.

There used to be a place called Sushi House in the same space and believe it or not, they did not change a thing. What was good for sushi is now good for good old russian cooking. If only. It looks cheap, worn and somehow it manages to give you the customer a finger. And that is not an easy thing for a decor to do.

We decided to get before dinner drinks and we were in luck as long as we were ordering Vodka and Beer. A good friend of mine made an absolutely ridiculous request for a Bloody Mary. Don't you agree? She must have been out of her freaking mind. Ordering a basic and easy to make coctail in a restaurant that has a bar. That is the first thing you see when you walk in. Anyway. She was told to reconsider her order and to get "Vodka and Juice". All our efforts to explain that if you mix Vodka and Tomato JUICE, you really are half-way there, fell short. The waitress would not budge. And that really was OK. It was just the beginning.

Now I have to admit I feel sorry for the Le Grand Chef of Ryumka. Not because every single dish brought to the table that night tasted like he or she was trying to poison us and just forgot to double up on the pernicious ingredients in these master concoctions. No, that's not it. Really. Really, really.

The reason I feel sorry for Le Grand Chef is that we all know how hard it is to recover from a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome. It is not easy opening these


all night long. By the plopping sounds coming from the kitchen I would have to say that they were working hard and probably the damage done to their ligaments is irreversible. So lets all help these guys out. If none of us go to Ryumka they will have to close it up and then the poor Le Grand Chef can find another job, where he or she will end up using a knife, cutting board and ingredients that you get from a market again. Let's unite in this noble cause.

We will need a good name for this movement. I propose to call it NNM (NoxiousNoMore)