Just a quick(ish) wrap-up on the places we ate in Moscow and St. Petersburg a few weeks ago. Cafe Pushkin and Molokhovets Dream got their own posts because they’re expensive, “destination dining” types of places that get written up everywhere. And this post is where I’ll quickly summarize some of the other restos to give you a sense for the dining scene. Keep in mind that I don’t speak Russian and I’m no local, but in my favor, I’m a very curious, interested outsider. (Well, and also while in Moscow, I traveled with a friend who lived in Moscow into her teens).
Bocconcino was my favorite dining-out experience in Moscow. I know – eating Italian food in Moscow sounds silly, but it’s not like Russians only want to eat Russian food when they go out. The decor is chic and warm, and the beauty of our showing up underdressed in jeans is that we got seated in a smoke-free, quiet back room instead of the more “scenester” front room. I’d read in the Moscow Times that the restaurant had a wood-burning oven and delicious pizzas, and like I said a few posts ago, after several days of eating only Russian food, I couldn’t resist the siren call of buffalo mozzarella and Mediterranean flavors. Most pizzas and pastas are 400-600 Rubles ($16-$24), so it’s not priced like your neighborhood pizzeria, but the ingredients are quality and the food is hot and fresh. Service was slow and disinterested.
Bocconcino, 7 Strasnoi Bulvar, +7 495-299-7359; closest metro: Pushkinskaya
Kvartira 44 was recommended by Helen’s Moscow friend, Masha, and I think if I could travel back in time, Kvartira would have been an introduction to Russian food as good as the one we had at Cafe Pushkin. The big advantage of Kvartira would be that it’s about five times cheaper than Cafe Pushkin. The decor of Kvartira is that of a small home library and that of Cafe Pushkin is that of a large, grand home library. So think of Kvartira 44 as Cafe Pushkin Lite. Borscht, pelmeni, blini, smoked herring – it’s all here and for the most part, it all tasted no worse than the versions we had at Pushkin.
The teas offered were varied, and getting hot water refills was easy. I highly recommend trying this place out to try classic Russian dishes in a casual, comfortable room. It’s a little bit tricky to find because the doorway is inside an archway, but it’s down Tveskaya Boulevard from Cafe Pushkin, so it’s in a nice neighborhood (i.e., don’t be dodged out by the archway entrance). The total for four appetizers, three mains and three pots of tea: 2000 roubles ($80).
Kvartira 44, 24/8 Malaya Yakimanka, +7 495-238-8234; closest metro: Tverskaya
Sword and Shield could have been *a lot* worse. I think the boys pushed us into going here. It’s a restaurant that’s close to Lubyanka, the former headquarters of the KGB, so the place was (and perhaps still is?) popular for cloak and dagger types. Sword and Shield has the drab brown colors you’d expect in a KGB office circa 1970, and all the potraits of KGB stars (including one of Putin in his black belt outfit) demand reverence. Videos of Putin in the news cycle through the TV in the corner, and that’s it by way of background noise. Don’t come here expecting kitsch that you can laugh at.
We stopped by for lunch because it’s not a far walk from Red Square, and we actually enjoyed our food. Nothing fancy. Your usual Russian dishes. The blini were especially good there, I thought. Big, fresh, eggy crepes and generous portions of smoked salmon and salmon caviar. Similar prices to those of Kvartira 44, with our tab for four appetizers, four mains and drinks totaling 500 ($20) roubles per person. Don’t miss the camouflage leaves in the bathrooms. No joke.
Sword and Shield, 7 Malaya Lubyanka Street, +7 495-621-1378; closest metro: Lubyanka
As for Dioskuriya and Fisheria – avoid at all costs. The former is a Georgian restaurant recommended in several sources (including our Lonely Planet Moscow guidebook – which I used only because it was the most up-to-date one I could find on Moscow), and when we showed up for lunch, it was empty except for a table of tourists and two tables of large men smoking, drinking and talking into their phones constantly. Our server took so long to serve us our food that after an hour of waiting around for just the hot tea to arrive, we just canceled our order and left.
The latter, Fisheria, was the site of the Fish with Congealed Cheese Incident. The crab soup wasn’t bad, though you have to pretend like the chicken broth doesn’t include huge pools of chicken fat oil on top.
In St. Petersburg, in addition to splashing out at Molokhovet’s Dream, we also ate at the Georgian-Azerbaijani restaurant, Karavan, and the Russian restaurant, Cafe Idiot, both recommended by the normally-excellent Wallpaper Guide series.
Karavan was pretty good. If I had to give a quick description of the food, I’d say think grilled meats and middle-eastern style rice and breads. The plov (rice dish with grilled lamb and dried fruits) was especially good after you added some salt, and the service was helpful and friendly. The breads tasted stale and store-bought, though. As seemed typical in many restaurants we’d tried in Moscow, the decor was pretty cheesy: at the back of Karavan is a large, paper mache camel living it up in what looks to be an oasis. Entertaining. Two appetizers, breads, beers and mains cost 1000 roubles ($80).
Cafe Idiot, named after the Dostoevsky novel, I would avoid. The only reason I can think of for why it made it into the higly-edited, style-conscious Wallpaper St. Petersburg guide is because the staff speak english and the decor is quirky and cozy (i.e., lots of antique typewriters, shelves of books – again with the books in restos! – busts of Lenin). But all the food we tried (and we tried a lot) was terrible. The fried brown bread tasted like stale oil; the pickles were soggy; the salmon blini were pre-filled with mostly sour cream and dill (where’s the salmon!?!); and the potato pelmeni took blandness to new heights, despite the “mushroom sauce” and bushels of dill. I did like my pot of berry tea, though, so if you go, perhaps go just for tea and dessert. Our tab for two was just shy of 1000 roubles ($80).
What fun to read this and the previous posts! I visited Moscow and St Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1987, when there were no decent restaurants (for tourists at any rate) to speak of, or write about. The food I had was horrible! But I look forward to a completely different experience when I return for my second visit one day…
Helen Yuet Ling
Hi Helen, a friend of mine who visited Moscow and St. P in the 1990s also told me the food she had (as a tourist) was awful — indistinguishable lumps of meat; huge menu offerings but few dishes actually available – that sort of thing. While I wouldn’t call Russia a food destination, it definitely sounds from what you’re saying that Moscow and St. P restaurants have come a long way quickly.
Guys, the food in St Petersburg is great (never ate out in Moscow) (and that’s one of a few things I like there), foreigners just don’t know where to go, falling for cheesy advertisement and for English names.
The places you must go are: “Chainaya lozhka” (everywhere in the city), “Shinok” (metro “Vladimirsakaya”), British Bakery (for pastry and coffee) and many others, although I cannot guarantee the staff there will speak English. You’ll probably need a local friend or a translator. Without them it’s hard to find these places, as you probably don’t read Russian. That’s why I always recommend my non-Russian friends to visit Russia only with the organized tours, not on their own… Good luck to you anyway!
Hi CV,
It’s no doubt true Jon and I didn’t get as much out of the food scene in St. P as we could have because we don’t speak Russian, but I did spend five days in Moscow with a friend who grew up in Moscow and who still had friends living in Moscow. The food in Moscow was fine, but I still didn’t think I got a lot of great food – especially for the money. Even the cheapest pirozhki wasn’t as tasty as the cheapest steamed dumpling in Beijing or the pad thai off the street in Chiang Mai.
For what it’s worth, I would never go to a restaurant on the basis of a “cheesy advertisement,” and are you saying the “British Bakery” is a place that’s would be different from those with “English names” popular with english-speaking tourists?
I also think that going on an organized tour wouldn’t yield better food choices. Tour groups tend to go to restaurants big enough to accommodate them (or to restaurants where the tour operator gets a kick back, perhaps). So I’d be surprised if an organized tour really took you to the best food a city had to offer. If any readers have had great food on an organized tour, I’d love to know who the tour operator was.
Sorry if I’m kind of busting your chops, CV, and I do appreciate that you took the time to share your recs (do you live in St. P?). It’s comments like yours that may come in handy for future travelers to St. P, which, overall, was a beautiful city and I’m so glad I visited. As a last note, I think the more info we can make publicly available, the easier it is for travelers to find good food without having a local friend or speaking the local language.
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Phantom.
[...] similarly well matched with sour cream. Both were better than any of the pelmeni/dumplings I had in Russia two years ago, though they cost about 12x more than in Moscow and St. Petersburg, so I’d expect no less. [...]