The bakery in Karja, Saaremaa (Karja Pagariäri)

The Vanilla Custard Cream Thing. Dan and I agree this is the top-ranking pastry product from Karja Pagariäri, a tiny grocery store and bakery, less than 15 minutes’ drive from the Cabin in the Woods on Saaremaa island in Estonia. We had tasted a similar pastry before – but not fresh like this, from this bakery. The filling was creamy, rich, sugary-sweet but not so sweet as to make you feel ill. I wouldn’t trust myself to be left alone with three of them; I could easily demolish three – maybe even starting in on a fourth – with no break in-between. I’m not a binge eater, apart form a very small list of very specific foods that I’m unable to keep in the house when I’m alone (peanut butter and Nutella are on that list). Tasting this Vanilla Custard Cream Thing gave me a new addition to that list.

Karja Pagariäri (Karja Bakery), Saaremaa

[Incidentally, we still don’t know what these are called in Estonian, or even if they originate from Estonia. Let us know if you know. When you visit Karja Pagariäri bakery, pointing and a smile will work out, regardless.]

Karja Pagariäri bakery on Saaremaa is a small operation, and since I was there in off-season, they were often sold out of the Vanilla Custard Cream Things by mid-day, so I was forced to sample other items. A sweet cinnamon pastry bread was commendable. I particularly enjoyed the experience of devouring a giant cream puff, seated on a small picnic table outside the bakery, bundled up and exposing my hands to the cold, only for the sake of handling the pastry. The plan wasn’t originally to stay and eat on-site in the cold, but transporting a fresh cream puff that isn’t packaged for transit, isn’t actually possible; so there was no choice but to have an impromptu picnic and consume the goods immediately.

Going to the bakery itself became a little ritual; one of those things you know you shouldn’t do too often, but one of us would readily convince the other. Dan: “Shall we go to the bakery?” Me: “You’re going to get fat eating pastry every day!” Dan: “Yeah, you’re right…”

But then we would usually go anyway.

I largely refrained from eating the bakery bread, but normally would sample one slice from Dan’s loaf. Meanwhile, he was finishing off a loaf brought home from Karja Pagariäri every two or three days – bread with lunch, bread with dinner, bread with butter as a snack. The bakery had many varieties of bread, and all we tried were delicious.

Frequenting a local bakery like Karja Pagariäri is also one of those small, quirky rituals I love about slow travel. Had I just been passing through, it might have easily just been “that bakery where I stopped for ten minutes on the way from A to B.” I would have sampled one pastry, and it might not have happened to be the Vanilla Custard Cream Thing, and that would have been a real shame. Staying in one place for a month meant that there were many trips to the bakery, many pastries sampled, and a familiarity as the bakery lady came to recognize us.

I actually dropped my half-eaten cream puff onto the picnic table that day (cue my inner child sobbing), and then went in to the Bakery Lady with a lengthy apology typed out on my phone in Google Translate, along with a request for a napkin to clean up the mess. The bakery lady read the translated text carefully, a bit confused as to why I was suddenly insisting that she read my phone. She then almost laughed (Estonians have a way of ‘almost-laughing,’ I’ve noticed) and shoo’ed me away with some words that appeared to mean she would take care of the mess, and I wasn’t to worry. From then on, I felt remembered and recognized – not just for being some foreign woman, but rather, some foreign woman who had made a mess of her fresh cream puff, like a child. But in an endearing way, I think.

There are hardly any other establishments for miles around the bakery; although notably, there is a library immediately opposite the bakery that appears large enough to serve the entire island, for reasons that remain unknown. Otherwise, there’s a small Co-op grocery store about five minutes’ drive away, and a nice restaurant across the street from that, catering to summer tourists. But as far as places for locals to go, just for the sake of going someplace, I got the sense that, in winter especially, the bakery was one of the top options.

Typically, when we went, there would be at least one other customer coming or going, which qualifies the place as ‘buzzing’ for this remote part of Saaremaa in winter. And often, a lone elderly person would be seated quietly at one of the picnic tables, apparently just passing time, watching people come and go. I couldn’t help but wonder whether that could be me in 40 or 50 years. Hopefully the bakery will still be there, so that I might find out.

With its complete monopoly on the local pastry market, I imagine Karja Pagariäri will indeed still be there.

Karja Pagariäri OÜ

Plus Code GP62+V4 Karja, Saare County

Saaremaa, Estonia