The 8 Best Cheap Eats in Tallinn, Ranked
Bowl of pelmeni dumplings at a Tallinn market food stall
Eight Tallinn meals under €12 that are genuinely worth eating, ordered by what you’d send a friend to first.
1. Pelmeni at Rado, Balti Jaam market — €8-10
Rado on the upstairs food-court floor at Balti Jaam serves boiled Russian-style dumplings — meat, mushroom, potato, cottage cheese — in bowls with sour cream, butter and dill for €8-9. Portions are large enough that most people finish uncomfortably full. The pelmeni are hand-pinched, the broth is proper, and the sour cream is the thick Estonian kind, not the thin stuff.
This is my single most-recommended cheap meal in Tallinn. It is not a secret — the queue at 1pm on Saturday runs 15 minutes — but it deserves the queue. Order the meat version first, then come back another day for mushroom. Add a glass of kvass for €2. Cash and card both work. Sit at the shared tables, watch the market below, and understand why Estonians never stopped eating this after independence.
2. Lunch special at F-hoone, Telliskivi — €9-11
F-hoone in Telliskivi Creative City does a weekday lunch special from 12pm to 4pm: soup and a main for €9-11 depending on the day. The kitchen is Estonian comfort food with Nordic-modern edges — beetroot and horseradish soup, braised pork cheek with barley, cod with dill potatoes. Portions are honest, the bread is house-baked, and the coffee is real espresso rather than filter mud.
The industrial-chic room seats around 120 and still fills up. Go at 11.45 to beat the Telliskivi office crowd or after 2pm. Weekends are pricier — a la carte only, mains €14-18 — so this deal is strictly Monday to Friday. It is the best sit-down meal in Tallinn under €12 and one of the few where you can bring a vegetarian without apologising.
3. Kohupiimavorst and rye bread from any bakery — €3-5
The cheapest satisfying Tallinn breakfast is a slab of kohupiimavorst — sweet quark log with vanilla, sometimes chocolate-dipped — and a slice of dense sourdough rye from a bakery counter. Try Rukis on Roosikrantsi, Renard on Vaike-Karja, or any Selver supermarket bakery for €3-5 total. Add a coffee for €3 and you have breakfast under €8.
This is what Estonian office workers actually eat between meetings. Kohupiimavorst is a national obsession, roughly quark cheese formed into a log with sugar and flavourings, sliced into rounds. Rye bread here is properly sour, dense, and improves with butter. If you only try one thing from this list at a supermarket, make it a Kalev or Tere kohupiimavorst and a loaf of Leibur rukkileib.
4. Vietnamese pho at NOP or Han — €10-12
Han, on Ahtri street near the port, does a proper 20cm bowl of pho bo for €10-11 with brisket, tendon and tripe options, plus banh mi at €6-8. Broth is simmered eight hours, herbs are fresh, and the crowd is a mix of Estonians and homesick Vietnamese from the small local diaspora. Second-generation family run, no pretension, chopsticks and lime on every table.
This is the best cheap non-Estonian food in the city and worth walking twenty minutes for. Skip the Tallinn Vietnamese places attached to sushi kitchens — they exist and they’re mediocre. Han is the real thing. Lunch queues are shorter than dinner. Add a glass of the house iced coffee (Vietnamese-style, condensed milk, €4) for the full experience. Cash and card both fine.
5. Kringel and kohupiimapirukas at Reval Cafe — €4-6
Reval Cafe has branches all over Tallinn including Muurivahe in Old Town and Solaris shopping centre. Their kringel — braided sweet bread with cinnamon, raisins and almonds — costs €3.50 a slice and is a legitimate meal. Add a curd-cheese pirukas (small filled pastry) for €2 and a coffee for €3 and you have lunch for €8.50.
This is the chain everyone dismisses because it is a chain. Ignore that. Reval's baking is consistently better than the independent Old Town cafés at half the price. The Old Town branches get tourist-priced sandwiches; stick to the pastry side of the counter. Kringel keeps well for a day so buy an extra slice for the train to Tartu or the bus to Lahemaa. Best value €4 in central Tallinn.
6. Sooda kotletid at any Selver hot counter — €6-8
Selver, the big Estonian supermarket chain, has a hot counter in most branches doing home-cooked Estonian food to take away: kotletid (pork-and-beef patties) with mashed potato and sauerkraut, chicken schnitzel, cabbage rolls, sult (jellied meat if you’re brave). A full plate is €6-8. The Solaris and Kristiine branches have the biggest selection.
This is what students, pensioners and office workers on tight budgets eat, and the quality is legitimately better than most tourist-facing Old Town lunches at twice the price. Bring the food to a bench in a park or eat it standing at the counter. Not a romantic meal but the best €7 you will spend. Every ingredient is what a Tallinn grandmother would recognise from her own kitchen.
7. Verivorst at the Christmas market or Turg 8 — €5-8
Verivorst is Estonian blood sausage, traditionally eaten at Christmas with lingonberry jam and sauerkraut. At the December Christmas market on Raekoja plats, a plate runs €8-10 and is worth it once for the atmosphere. Year-round, Turg 8 restaurant near the port does verivorst at €7 as a starter with barley and pearl beans.
Blood sausage is polarising — sweet, slightly liver-y, spiced with allspice and marjoram, cut into thick rounds and fried. If you like black pudding you will like this. If you don’t, don’t order it. In supermarkets, Rakvere brand verivorst is €4-5 for four sausages you fry yourself in ten minutes. Serve with lingonberry from any jar labelled pohl. Under-appreciated by tourists, essential to Estonian food identity.
8. Doner or kebab at Turkiye on Estonia pst — €7-9
Late-night cheap food in Tallinn is limited, and Turkiye Kebab on Estonia puiestee is the honest answer. A proper durum wrap with lamb, salad and garlic sauce runs €7-8, a full plate €9. Open until 2am on weekends, midnight on weekdays. Not gastronomic but genuinely good — real bread, real meat, hot chilli sauce that is actually hot.
This is where you eat after a night at Hell Hunt or the clubs on Vana-Viru. Skip the Old Town kebab shops on Viru street which double the price for tourists doing the same math. Cash preferred. There are three or four other decent kebab places within a five-minute walk, all similarly priced; Turkiye is the one I default to. Not fancy, not local cuisine, but essential to the actual eating landscape of Tallinn.
Before you book
The questions people ask about Telliskivi, answered with this month’s numbers.
A bakery breakfast of kohupiimavorst and rye bread with coffee runs €5-6. Renard on Vaike-Karja and Rost in Telliskivi both do proper pastry-and-coffee breakfasts under €8. Hotel breakfasts in mid-range places (€12-18) are worth skipping in favour of these unless included in your rate.
F-hoone always has vegetarian and vegan options. Reval Cafe pastries are mostly vegetarian though not vegan. Rado has mushroom and potato pelmeni. Selver hot counters vary but usually have at least a cabbage or mushroom option. Turkiye does a falafel wrap. Han has vegetable pho and tofu banh mi.
Sticking to this list, €25-30 covers three solid meals a day: bakery breakfast €6, cheap-eat lunch €9-11, cheap-eat dinner €10-12, plus one coffee and one snack. Add €15-20 if one meal is a proper sit-down dinner at F-hoone or similar. Alcohol adds fast — €6-8 per beer in bars.
