I wonder if people realize...

[Rubashov]

In Estonia and in Europe in general the tipping is not compulsory i.e both de jure and de facto the owners and the servers should not be angry should you not tip. Sometimes we have tipped a la when we had a birthday party at the restaurant, then we gave about 30 EUR (total bill for 15 persons was about 400) the main server.
My theory is that if the main dish is about 20 euros and the cheapest bottle of wine is 30 euros, then the owners should have more than enough funds to properly pay to the server. Specially if that same wine costs 5 euros at the supermarket. IMHO when compared to Croatia or Italy or Japan - in Estonia i will pay for the interior, furniture and location, not for food (i.e sometimes the portions are quite small compared to other countries). Therefore i cook more at home than eat at the restaurant. I do not want to brag or something like that but if the raw product is good enough (i.e good steak or duck fillet) then you can cook equally well at home. That is why i envy the selection of raw stuff at US supermarkets - it seems that the selection of different meat and fish products are much much more larger than in my country.

Also, what is food thread without some links of the recently visited restaurants. World is small, you never know when you might visit some of those.
https://sardiinid.ee/en/
https://io-restoran.ee/en/restaurant/menu
http://www.restoranmoon.ee/menu/?lang=en

Restaurant in Suwalki, Poland where we spent a night during our autumn vacation.
https://www.hotelloft.pl/en/restaurant-tatarak-menu-page-105744
Actually, everywhere in Poland (with the exeption of tourist traps and Warszawa, Krakow and Gdansk) - should you visit some restaurant, then for a typical family (2 adults, 2 children) you need to order only 3 main dishes . Maybe even only 2 main dishes and 2 lighter ones. The portions are huge. And price is less than in Baltics or Germany, Austria, France or Italy.

On my last trip to Europe with the exception of Norway, everywhere i ate was cheaper than here, i was getting Australian Wagyu cheaper in Hamburg than i could ever hope to find it here. Prices here are inflated mainly by rent, wages have hardly moved in ten years. Rent on a busy high street can easily be 10k a week, restaurants are a really good way to loose money.