Alina Birjuk's croissant project in Tallinn looks like a baking ranking. It isn't. The photographer shot pastries from different bakeries at identical scale on plain white backgrounds, then removed the names. No winner, no brands — just the pastries, side by side, so viewers judge what's actually in front of them. Selected prints went on show in September 2026 at Design Night's 'Carb Cult' exhibition in Tallinn, made with Paper Mill.
Birjuk arrived at the project after months following the croissant trail in Zürich, where she now lives, and expected to crown a champion in the city she grew up in. Instead she found Tallinn's croissants 'quietly, consistently good' across the board. The differences were in the details: a pinch of salt flakes at Karjase Sai, the yeast-free pastry at Crustum, and the pick-your-own freshness at François Boulangerie, where croissants come from a box or a service window. She isn't chasing authenticity either — these are Nordic croissants, she says, shaped by where they're made.
The pastry series is really an argument about food. Switzerland taught Birjuk what deliberate food culture looks like: restaurants built around local ingredients, menus naming the farm behind a dish, roadside shops where you take eggs and leave money in a box. Swiss organic food made up 12.3% of sales in 2024, with shoppers spending about €481 a head a year. Estonia has its own strengths — 22.5% of its farmland is organic, one of Europe's highest shares — but grows only around 30% of the vegetables it eats, down from roughly 60% a decade ago. The country wastes about 167,000 tonnes of food annually, worth €164 million, with the average household binning €180 a year.
She'd also like Estonians to give broad beans the attention they give foraged mushrooms and berries. They grow well locally and pack protein, yet carry a lingering 'grandmother's food' image while imported chickpeas stay fashionable. And she's refreshingly unsmug about it: eat sustainably when you can, use peelings for stock, rescue stale bread, and don't aim for perfection.
Why should a traveller care? Because Tallinn's bakery scene is quietly excellent and rewarding to explore on foot — no queues or hype required. Try Karjase Sai for the salt-flaked version, Crustum for something unusual, and François Boulangerie if you want a croissant still warm from the window. And because noticing the hand behind your food, as Birjuk puts it, is a good habit to bring home from any trip.
