Restoran Olde Hansa

When Olde Hansa opened in 1997 inside a 17th-century baroque storehouse, its Belgian chef Emmanuel Wille faced an unusual constraint: nothing discovered after Columbus reached America in 1492 could touch the menu. No potatoes. No tomatoes. No chocolate. Instead, the three-floor restaurant serves bear stewed in wild berry sauce, elk tenderloin with truffles, and pepper schnapps by candlelight—all from recipes researched in medieval texts, cooked using slow-food techniques on wood stoves, just as Hanseatic merchants would have done when Tallinn controlled Baltic trade routes.