Tuljak

The Baltic frame in Tennen’s hands

Lamb dumplings arrive in fine dough rings under chef Martin Tennen at Tuljak in Pirita, Tallinn, where he leads the kitchen. His public lineage is the house itself: Modern Baltic cooking set beside Mediterranean and Asian influences, held inside the discipline of Modern Cuisine. No single named mentor defines the line here. The inheritance is read through the menu, the pass, and the way Estonian ingredients are allowed to meet a wider vocabulary without losing their footing.

Tennen’s station carries the restaurant’s restored identity as much as its current plates. Tuljak first opened in 1965 as Café Tuljak, an annex to Valve Pormeister’s Flower Pavilion, then later became Carina in the 1990s. After standing empty from 2002, the building returned in 2015 as a modern Estonian restaurant, with its Soviet modernist bones brought back into use. That history gives the kitchen a particular pressure: the work cannot be only nostalgic, and it cannot drift into anonymity. The Baltic base has to remain legible.

A menu that keeps the strands apart

The cooking moves by contrast rather than collage. Baltic herring, beef tartare, lamb dumplings, breaded shrimps, and the Bird’s Nest Dessert give the kitchen its recurring markers; around them sit accents from the Mediterranean and Asia, used as technique and seasoning rather than costume. The beef tartare has been noted for a lighter treatment with apple, while the prawns have appeared with lemongrass aioli. The point is not novelty. It is control at the bench, enough restraint for the Estonian line to stay visible.

The restaurant holds Bib Gourmand recognition from Michelin in 2024 and 2025, and White Guide Baltic Restaurants placed it at Very Fine Level in 2026. Those honours belong to Tuljak at this address, not to a travelling biography. They help locate the work Tennen leads now: a kitchen where value, character, and clarity have to meet on the same plate. The beverage side follows the room’s range, with a curated wine program and cocktails that sit beside the food rather than above it.

The room, the terrace, the sea

The room gives the pass unusually little cover. Floor-to-ceiling windows pull the Gulf of Finland into view, and sunset changes the light across the dining room before service has finished. The restored terrace, surrounding greenery, pool, and ice cream stand keep the 1960s plan in conversation with the present table. Retro-modern detail remains, but the room works because it is still useful: bright, spacious, and calm enough for the cooking to be read.

At Tuljak, the architecture is not a decorative frame for dinner. It is part of the method, asking the kitchen to answer a building that Tallinn already knows. If Tennen’s next movement is not publicly named, the present work is concrete enough: herring, tartare, lamb dumplings, and the Bird’s Nest Dessert moving through the same sea-facing room at Pirita tee 26e.