PARNU - In the last two months, the Estonian seaside town of Parnu witnessed the opening of two exciting businesses two blocks apart. In addition to a view of each other, Passion Cafe and Sugar share a penchant for scarlet lighting, an urban edginess in disharmony with the city's small population, and English titles that sound like they belong to strip clubs, but don't. Sugar is Parnu's newest night club, and Passion Cafe is a restaurant offering artsy 's if kooky 's ambiance and precisely made, healthy, Italian and Estonian cuisine.
Hopefully, Passion Cafe's sparse meals are a result of good culinary sense and not a concession to the gigantic amount of overhead behind its vibrant, schizophrenic atmosphere. The tongue-red foyer walls are covered with stencils of the titular passion flowers, and an impressive photo of cavorting figures made from water beads line both walls.
The rooms are full of lamps 's 76 in all 's which look like clusters of red and orange bell peppers and remain impressive even when unlit. The chairs are ergonomic and smartly Scandinavian, and the kids across from us seemed comfortable sitting at tables that looked exactly like their school desks.
The impetus for the decorating frenzy may have come from the ventilation tubes which, even when painted the calm tan of the ceiling, remain conspicuous as tapeworms. There are also, randomly, topiary trees. And, in case anyone wasn't aware of the contest, Passion Cafe has the best bathroom in Parnu, featuring studded metal paneling and a frosted glass door covered with flower prints.
Thankfully, the artiness lends no snootiness in the staff; they were efficient, polite and willingly humored botched Estonian.
Just as thankfully, there's nothing ostentatious about the food, which is simple and refined. Brothy, Mediterranean fish soups sell for between 30 and 40 kroons, and the menu features a decidedly thick and buttery yellow Boletus cream soup, to which customers will gladly sacrifice their cholesterol levels in frantic search for the delicious, drowned and, alas, too scarce mushrooms.
Thriftier customers will probably choose pasta dishes (70 - 80 kroons). Serving pasta is a conservative choice which can yield excessive results: for every restaurant that does Italian right, there are at least two that overdo it, and serve up embarrassingly rich, overly spiced heaps that encourage rampant wine consumption, clogged arteries and generally surround the glutton with pesto-soaked air of faux sophistication that dissipates the instant they mispronounce their meal.
Passion Cafe deftly avoids the problem through simple ingredients and sensible portions. The smoked salmon pasta with caviar sauce (85 kroons) came in a curved white bowl with a single cryptic hole in an upper corner, an oddity possibly culled from Henry Moore's dining set. The white sauce was refreshingly light although the salmon bits were small.
These are negligible issues, as the focus of the meal was undoubtedly the caviar eggs, tiny pustules of flavor that popped against the tongue like tiny flavorful grenades. Two juicy tomatoes sitting unobtrusively in the bowl helped to further relax a palette that was by now taking a caviar bubble bath.
For those with bigger wallets and an inkling for atypical meats, a variety of intriguing main dishes await: a moose cutlet ragout with red beans and rice (90 kroons) and a mutton curry with cherry sauce (160 kroons) should sate gourmands and roving medievalists alike. Wine runs a little pricey, and drinks at the bar are standard.
Overall, Passion Cafe's aesthetic farrago should endear before it offends, and, going off the taste, everyone working there knows the food is the real draw.
Passion Cafe
Kuninga 1, Parnu
Tel. +372 442 6202
www.passioncafe.ee
