Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

[Olga]

Eating Through Russia

While eating out in Moscow, choosing a suitable place is not a problem - one can find reliable food almost everywhere without challenging your stomach. But outside the city, things are different. Considerable care should be taken when eating on your journey. Luckily, times have changed, and quality food can be found outside cities. While rainy season calls for staying at home and thinking of future trips, let me introduce a sort of survival guide through Russia's native cuisine.

Thinking Ethnic

The bad news should come first: real Russian ethnic cuisine has nothing common with caviar and other luxurious meals. Those items should be considered the "tsars' menu," and you can have them in almost any high-class Russian restaurant, including provincial ones. To learn, though, what real-life Russian peasants eat (or rather ate a century ago on holidays), moderate-price restaurants should be visited. Recognizing a proper ethnic food spot from the range of numerous moderate-price cafes and restaurants is simple, but takes practice. In short, places decorated by wood and stone craftwork should be chosen (much like Moscow spots "Taras Bulba" or "Mu-mu"). Unlike in Moscow, provincial cafés decorated in such a way will offer you high-quality specially prepared meals. Among others, meat dishes served in ceramic pots are usually the best. Another advantage of ethnic restaurants of Russian province is their big portions and modest prices.

Soviet style

Do you know what a Soviet stolovaya means in terms of taste? It's good, I swear; and trying this kind of service makes any journey unforgettable. In Moscow this kind of place is almost extinct, but provincial towns and big highways still boast numerous examples of authentic Soviet stolovaya. Eating there is quite safe; today's stolovayas can be recognized by labels reading «Столовая» and specific old-fashioned curtains on windows. Prices vary from low to medium (150 - 500 rubles per person). The only significant disadvantage is the lack of alcohol on the menu, also a feature of Soviet catering style.

meat and dough

Meat and dough, what more do we need? At least, it was for centuries here - and there are still lots of specific spots that specialize these simple dishes. Blins are Russian-style pancakes, often used as wrapping for meat, cheese, etc. You find them at a blinnaya, and they are usually tasty. Pelmenaya and cheburechnaya deal respectively with pelmenis and chebureks. The former are boiled little meat dumplings, the latter are fried mutton-stuffed pies. Both are very tasty when cooked properly. If the place reads «Пельменная», or «Чебуречная», chances are you'll be alright.

‘From Dusk Till Dawn' cafes

Such places can be found near railway stations and along highways (though not all highway eating spots are such!). Tarantino's suspense will seem nothing compared to the atmosphere of such places after sunset. The places are for local drunkards, militia sergeants and Chechen-born KAMAZ drivers. In the daytime they have nothing to offer, except poor thin hotdogs and deep-frozen pieces of bread and cheese mislabelled pizza. In the evening, people drink here - and they drink hard, almost as hard as the frequent fights. Such spots are best for seeing the bottom of Russia. To learn the utmost bottoms of Russia one can simply go to the square of Three Stations (i.e. near the Komsomolskaya metro) and feel it to the full at night.

Fast food as it is

Big yellow M's can be found all over Russia, with most McDonalds in the cities. But fans of this chain still won't find these spots along highways.

Native fast food is something different. Hotdogs, potato chips, and deep-frozen pizzas are the best Russian fast food can boast. On the other hand, Asian food is widely available: shashlik, shawarma, fresh-baked Asian bread. Both variants are quite cheap (under 200 rubles per dinner). Choosing is quite hard, with a range from the tasteless to the medically unreliable. Grilled chickens («Куры гриль»), offered along highways, are tasty and cheap (100 - 150 rubles per whole chicken), but their safety is doubtful.

Traditional Travel food in Russia

Don't think though, that Russians have always chosen between expensive quality food and cheap trashy things; there is a considerable domestic way out, formerly omnipresent and still popular: Take all the food you need from home. Traditionally, railway and automobile food included home-fried chicken, boiled eggs, fresh vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes, cookies and chocolate. Thermos bottles with tea or coffee is a nice addition.

Ways Out

Unlike Europe or America, journeys in Russia require food planning. First, choose the category of food you want to get. Nice ethnic restaurants, especially in places of interests like Rostov and Novgorod etc., often require pre-booking (sometimes, weeks of advance are essential!). Places like blinnaya, pelmennaya and cheburechnaya are almost always accessible on short notice, but can be hard to find. Choosing a suitable road café on your way is possible, but you have to know what to look for.

The final test is to look inside: an empty hall or gangsta-looking guys inside are reasons to keep going (or prepare for adventures). Odors are your friends: smelling helps distinguish bad fast food from a nice café. Sadly, the latter category of eating spot - i.e. nice calm family-run cafes - is the rarest thing in the country.

when nature calls...

Restrooms are still not standard features on Russian highways. And polluting the surrounding fields and forests is already becoming less popular. Finding a toilet is an essential skill for travelers here.

The simplest way to proceed is to try to schedule your biological needs and use restrooms at the cafés and restaurants you visit. These are often adequate, though still not always up to European standards. McDonald`is often called in Russia "the world's leading chain of free toilets." Rooms at highway cafes can be even less comfortable than fields around - so the choice gets narrower.

Wooden cabins, often seen along the highways, usually serve men only. Ladies' rooms may be available, but it takes a certain temperament to brave them.

For those unfamiliar with Russian toilets and unwilling to get acquainted with them, having a portable toilet in the trunk is probably your only option. That, or be patient and wait for the next good café to come along.

By Anton Razmakhnin
 Moscow News

[Olga]

Beer the Russian Way

Moscow has all sorts of restaurants, be they Thai, Georgian, French or just about any other national cuisine you can think of. What there is a paucity of is Russian restaurants, and by this I mean restaurants that serve edible Russian food - your office's stolovaya does not count. For those of you who crave the Russian experience, a small Moscow bound chain called Durdin is there to oblige.

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

Durdin has outlets on Leningradski Prospekt, Michurinski Prospekt, Volgagradski Prospekt and Bolshaya Polyanka. Describing itself as a Russian beer restaurant, it is exactly this and serves you a range of Russian food and beer. The emphasis is on quality rather than a vast choice, and by and large you can expect to get hearty Russian fare, prepared extremely well, with extremely good beer in Ye Olde Russiane surroundings.

The décor describes itself as unique and from the beginning of the 20th century, and overall the atmosphere is of a well appointed tavern. The advertising blurb on the back of their business card boasts an exquisite musical program, which I suspect to be a lie of sorts. The one serious downside to this establishment was the very cheesy music that bopped away in the background. I don't know what demographic the music was supposed to attract, but it confused the otherwise high-brow culture vulture appeal. If you won't be distracted by the music then I do recommend this place, generally speaking the clientele is young men in suits and mullets, possibly attracted by the quality of the food and the beer.

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

The in house brewery is quite a feature, and a choice of mouth watering filtered, un-filtered, dark and light beer tempts the most lager-sceptic out there (myself included). They also offer well-known labels, including Pilsenskoe, Kabinetoe, Bavarskoe and Severnay Zvezda. House beer only comes in 500ml mugs and costs 95 rubles;  the other choices come in varieties as you would expect. Given the value for money and its sheer deliciousness, I would recommend the home brewed and the Severnaya Zvezda.

The food is just the sort to fill you up after a long working day, and is prepared very well. Being greedy, we opted for pelmeni for a starter, which would doubtless have satisfied less voracious appetites on its own. Both the meat and the mushroom varieties were succulent and made from decent ingredients. The dishes cost 265 rubles and 225 respectively.

I would return for their main dish -  a generously sized piece of beef filet for 490 rubles that was tender and flavorsome - anytime . If you require something less substantial, this place offers a decent array of salads, which range from 165 rubles to 345 rubles. Everything prepared on site was quite tasty, which leaves me with a healthy of faith in the kitchen's capabilities.

But when dessert rolled around, there seemed to be a managerial lapse of judgment. There was an unmistakable whiff of something that had been bought and then recycled, as it were, by Durdin. The marble cake was perfectly edible, but tasted manufactured (185 rubles). My Bilberry pie had the same problem and was still cold from the fridge (155 rubles).

All in all, Durdin is well worth a visit. I think it needs to clarify its marketing strategy, but the food and the drinks are by and large excellent and reasonably priced considering their high quality.

Convenient location if you live on the edge of town, and accessible if you want to eat in the centre.

Where this establishment really suffers is its management, who are simply rude. While the waiters are polite and helpful, it is inadvisable to ask them for any specific help as their managers will not let them assist.

One last important note. There have been rather serious complaints about the food in the past but it would seem that these issues have been taken care of.

By Tom Washington
Moscow News

http://www.durdin.ru/

[Olga]

Georgian Delights

Amorning at Mos­cow's conserva-tory can be hung-ry work. I'd sat through about four hours of an international piano competition and, as gratifying as hearing Beethoven's Waldstein hammered out with varying degrees of competence can be, food for the soul is not food for the body. As good luck would have it, I remembered a Georgian restaurant just down the road and on the same corner as Nikitski Bulvar.

U Nikitskikh Vorot was clearly a good choice, for it was endorsed by the panel. All the judges piled in, to be served in fine style by the U Nikitskikh's capacious kitchen and larder. Naturally, my dining companions and I did our best to eavesdrop upon their conversation, but the establishment rather inconveniently turned the background music on and installed us in a separate section of the restaurant.

Bickering and horse-trading is evidently a hungry-making process, for plate loads were carried through to the judges. The U Nikitskikh is well prepared for mass catering, and this was not the first time I've observed it feeding large numbers of people.  My previous visit had been with a group of ten people at half past ten on a Tuesday evening. The management, after a great deal of persuasion and one of the most effective sob stories it has ever been my privilege to witness, did finally squeeze us in around the party already there.

Georgian food is generally tasty and almost universally satisfying. The more people you have, the more scope you have to pick at different dishes, and the format particularly suits group feeding. U Nikitskikh Vorot does all the favorites well. Sturgeon Satsivi, Russia's favorite fish in a walnut sauce, is delicious and definitely something to try (120 rubles). Baklazhan (90 rubles), egg plant with funny paste, is likewise recommended and has a slightly acerbic edge to it. This dish goes very well with Khachapuri (260 rubles for a very large portion), Georgia's well loved stuffed bread; it is also, let's face it, the main reason that most of us go to a Georgian restaurant.

One of the highlights of this very long and leisurely lunch was an enormous plate of prawns, intended as a starter and comfortably shared by three hungry people -  just as well, seeing it cost 300 rubles. Tangy and flavorsome, these were a good quality product well prepared.

Dolma is another Georgian classic well suited for sharing. One of many possible stuffings, generally selected at the restaurant's discretion and in this case meat, is wrapped in vine leaves and steamed. Six for 200 rubles is not a bad rate and is a recommended component of any Georgian meal.

Heavier dishes included a fried, delicately flavored and textured brown trout (280 rubles), and a substantial lamb and potato stew (230 rubles). The latter might be a bit fatty for many people's tastes, and would probably be most appreciated on a cold winter's day. But it was also warmly appreciated by the greedy on a summer's afternoon.

This would be a good juncture to note that this restaurant is not laid out for sun gods. You are ushered downstairs into a windowless basement with bear skins hanging on the stone wall. Given the quality of the food, this is a price worth paying. There are, after all, many other places in Moscow where one can soak up the sun's rays at street-side tables. Vast quantities of good food at a reasonable price are appreciated at any time of year, and the above mentioned bill could easily have been shared with a fourth mouth.

By Tom Washington
http://www.mnweekly.ru

[Olga]

top 7 georgian restaurants

http://www.elementmo...u/top-7.php?i=111000

[Olga]

The night club in Moscow "Night Flight"

[Olga]

08/11/2007 | Moscow News, № 44 2007

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

Finding an unpretentious night club for straightforward fun in central Moscow can be a difficult business. Somewhere you don't have to think about flashing the Prada label in your jacket to be sure of getting in, where you don't have to worry that the local girl you're talking to might end up charging you for the pleasure if you take things any further. Fortunately, "Sorry, Babushka" near Kitai-Gorod is one such place.

The club's name is probably the weirdest thing about it. Love our grandparents as we might, there are few among us who want to have them at the front of our minds when drinking, dancing or indulging in anything else the clubbing experience might entail. Sorry, Babushka's management claim that the title comes from a Russian slang term for the feeling one gets after "active relaxation." (Is that phrase found anywhere in the language other than in press releases translated from Russian to English?) It's not entirely convincing, but the bar's brightly-colored logo of a bag-ladened Babushka's silhouette over the entrance gets any trip there off to an amusing start.

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

Luckily, the interior design has little of the senior citizen about it. A seating area at the back of the club is furnished with purple leopard-print sofas, low glass tables and chandeliers. The ceiling is broken up into rectangular blocks set at different levels, like richly upholstered stalactites.

The only allusion to the babushka theme is a wall behind the bar, decorated by a photo-mural that will either make you laugh or cry. It features a line of Russian women of a certain age - the sort you see selling flowers outside metro stations - decked out in Dolce & Gabbana visors, feather boas, or clutching hand-bag sized dogs, Paris Hilton style. It might not be to everyone's taste, but at least it gives you something to look at when waiting for a cocktail.

There are a number of house cocktails on offer, from the variation-on-a-classic watermelon mohito to the explosive ‘Mitrofan Compote,' which mixes bourbon, rum, tequila and peach liqueur. All cost between 200 and 300 rubles, but there are also cheap beers if you need to party on a budget. The only problem likely to arise will come if you feel like sitting down to enjoy your drink - bar girls patrolling the tables sometimes demand you pay up to 1,000 rubles for the privilege of sitting at one at peak times. This policy seems a little out of place in a club so otherwise democratic and laid back.

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

The music is varied but generally upbeat, and there is a recurring theme of 80's and 90's tunes; surely the pinnacle of man's achievement in the musical sphere. If you want to dance - and with music as good and drinks as strong as this, you probably will - there's a reasonably-sized dance floor next to the bar that is packed on weekends.

The club plays host to live acts - such as Black Sabbath for its opening in 2005 - and arranges occasional comedy evenings. It also serves food during the day.

The feis kontrol isn't tight, which is surprising considering that this is a well designed, carefully thought-out club in the city center. Despite this, the crowd in the evenings is mainly young and attractive. If you encounter any problems, speaking English loudly at the door will apparently help.

Sorry, Babushka manages to strike a balance in almost every respect. The design is fun without being silly, the music is a mixture of tunes everyone will recognize and beats that sound like they were made yesterday, and the crowd seems relaxed but has still obviously made an effort. An ideal place for "active relaxation" - whatever that might mean.

Where: Slavyanskaya Ploschad, 2/1. Phone 788 0615

By Theodore Merz

[Olga]

Moscow Restaurants

http://www.fodors.co...tings_nam_20002.html


http://www.moscowcit...ants/restaurants.htm

http://eng.menu.ru/

   
Beer Restaurants in Moscow

http://www.waytoruss...BeerRestaurants.html

[Olga]

In the depths of winter, even the shortest stroll along the pavements of Moscow can feel like a real-life adaptation of The Odyssey. Fortunately, the capital's streets offer many spots where the hungry urban traveler can refuel before facing the next perilous stage of their quest (Read: angry babushka). After extensive research, The Moscow News presents a survival guide to the food kiosks whose odoriferous emanations invigorate the city.

Kroshka Kartoshka:

Everyone knows the Atkins diet is so 2003, so take a pit-stop at this baked potato and toasted sandwich chain for as many complex carbohydrates as your heart could desire. The jacket potatoes come fresh from the oven, and can be filled with your choice of chee­ses, meats, vegetables and sauces. If you are not a fan of excessive mayonnaise, you can always pick the brynza (soft cheese) to moisten your spud. However, there seems to be no hope for their unpleasantly dry sandwiches.

PROS: What could be better than a steaming tat to warm up a spell in sub-zero temperatures? The wide range of fillings to mix and match also means that no two dining experiences have to be the same.

CONS: One Moscow News correspondent reported four days of intestinal disturbances after sampling the delights of Kroshka Kartoshka. You may draw your own conclusions.

Stardogs:

If you have ever stepped outside your flat in Moscow, you will have seen one of these hotdog stands. At Stardogs, sausages cook on an open hot plate, their merry sizzle and heavenly smell calling out to the next eager customer. Bread is warmed for each 'dog and you can take your pick of buns, sauces, and sausages or patties to create your perfect between-meal snack. The servers wear a rather fetching red apron-uniform.

PROS: The phallic implications of their French Hot­dog will bring a smirk to the face of even the most hardened Mus­covite.

CONS: The unpleasant pool of Mustard invariably left at the end of the French Hotdog bun will wipe that smile straight off.

Rickshaw and Van:

These Asian stands offer takeaway noodles, fried rice and meat dishes in Chinese-American style fold-up cardboard boxes, with pots of soup and trays of sushi also available. The owners of the franchise tell us that spices unavailable in Russia are "ordered directly from China and delivered exclusively" for use in their dishes. The Moscow News fails to see the point, as after the individual stalls warm up the centrally-made meals in a microwave, the dishes are invariably bland and soggy (but yet strangely satisfying).

PROS: The stalls are relatively quiet, so servers are often pleased to have your company and will take the opportunity to tell you a little about themselves. One Rickshaw and Van employee gave The Moscow News her life story as our boxes rotated in the microwave. She concluded her tale with: "waitressing - it's not the best profession, but it's mine." We admired the pride she took in her work.

CONS: The meat tastes like dog food. Or maybe just dog.

Teremok:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every visitor to Russia must sample blini. If you're pressed for time, or can't afford the Café Pushkin pancakes with caviar, Teremok kiosks offer a viable alternative. The batter is poured onto a hot plate in front of your very eyes, and within seconds your chosen filling - sweet or savory - will be melting temptingly inside the cooked pancake. As well as the classics like ham, cheese, chicken, gherkin, red caviar, chocolate and fruit, Teremok occasionally comes up with special seasonal blini creations, such as their current "Icelandic" pancake with herring.

PROS: The pancakes have a predictable rubberiness to them, which is quite comforting in its own special way. The kiosks are exceptionally useful for lazy Brits who can't be bothered to make their own pancakes on Pancake Day.

CONS: The fillings aren't as generous as the advertising suggests.

Shawarma Stands:

Choosing a stand to buy your shawarma from is like having unprotected sex - due to the high risk of disease it should only ever be with someone you know and trust. Also, alcohol is likely to affect your judgment. The man wrapping your lamb up in a Lavash (flat bread) might seem friendly enough, but that does not necessarily mean he has washed his hands before reaching into the salad tray.

While shawarma stalls are generally family-run enterprises rather than the franchises listed above, their ubiquity in the city must earn them a place in this rough guide.

PROS: The Middle-Eastern snack is simply delicious.

CONS: Humans are not the only ones who find themselves drawn to the stalls' warmth and appetizing smell. Rats are also fans, and especially enjoy defecating on ingredients. The Head of the Russian Agency for Health an­nounced late last year that "In 70 percent of laboratory tests, E. coli was found in the salad fillings used for shawarmas. In other words, by eating these shawarmas, people are eating feces." The food from these stalls can be convenient and tasty, but choose wisely. There is, after all, nothing funny about acute intestinal infection.

By Theodore Merz

Moscow News

[Olga]

Pelmeni Bar

By Theodore Merz Moscow News

I always thought of Pelmeni as a peasant food; glutinous parcels of meat that sustained the body but could never delight the senses. But my thoughts on the dumplings were shaken to the very core on a recent trip to Riga and the discovery of ‘Pelmeni XL', a Latvian restaurant chain. Instead of the Sweeny Todd-esque gristle so often found within the Russofied ravioli, each of XL's Pelmeni contained a succulent morsel of meat. Instead of the usual slimy gunk, pleasantly salty wet dough sealed every one. And don't even get me started on the broth. I knew that, when I returned to Russia, I could not go on living as I had been doing - after Riga's master class, there could be no going back to the stodgy dumplings of the stolovaya or produkty.

In Moscow my mind kept wandering back to that Latvian meal. So I made a few calls and, to my delight, discovered ‘Beriozka,' a newly opened Pelmeni bar at Taganskaya. I went with a heart full of excitement and trepidation - could the dumplings there ever live up to my earlier experience?

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

They did, but the restaurant has a certain weirdness that I couldn't quite define. The interior is a fusion of modern and traditional styles - bare brick walls and dark wood furniture. Sitting in its long, low-lit dining room, surrounded by indoor birch trees and televisions playing what seemed to be enactments of traditional Russian fairytales somehow filled me with a sense of impending doom - not the laidback country atmosphere the owners were obviously going for. The wait staff, though friendly, appropriately looked liked they'd been raised on a diet of Pelmeni and not much else, which added to the feeling of being in an episode of Tales of the Unexpected. I don't like making personal remarks, so you'll have to go there yourself to know exactly what I mean.

Fortunately the Pelmeni itself makes up for the rather strange atmosphere. Every bit as saltily succulent as my Riga revelation, here the dumplings come in a whole variety of flavors, from the normal beef and pork to the more adventurous ‘spicy', via the downright odd ‘sushi Pelmeni' (rice and salmon). Every item can be requested either boiled or fried, though I recommend boiled, both for its warming broth and the fact that the fried option requires quite considerable amounts of Sme­tana to combat the dryness of the dough. At 140 rubles a bowl, nothing need stand in the way of you and all the Pelmeni you could desire.

The rest of the menu contains a list of house sausages, beer snacks, main meat dishes and desserts. Beriozka seems like more somewhere to go for just beer and Pelmeni though - the house kolbasa was adequate but nothing special and many items from the menu were not available on our visit.

As well as a long menu of imported and Russian beers, several tables also have their own beer taps and a petrol pump-style meter to record the amount diners are pouring for themselves. The house light beer was good, and the dark tastes similar to kvas (if the taste of flat coke mixed with Marmite is your sort of thing). Our abysmal pouring skills were there for all to see as we sat waiting for our self-poured glasses of froth to turn into something more drinkable, though the novelty was just enough to make it worth it.

So I found somewhere to support my new conversion to Pelmeni-ism, even if it isn't the sort of place I could imagine visiting every week. If you haven't yet found the love for the Russian dumpling, I suggest you give Beriozka's version a try.

schyot, please!

Bowl of boiled or fried Pelmeni - 140 rub.

Turkey Kolbasa - 290 rub.

Dark house beer 0.5 - 125 rub.

Light house beer 0.5 - 95 rub.

Vobla beer snack - 100 rub.

Chocolate soufflé - 180 rub.

[Olga]

By Theodore Merz

http://www.mnweekly.ru

Café Margarita is a Moscow institution. In a city where restaurants close and open every week, Margarita has been run by the same management with few major changes for the last 20 years. The café's name comes from its location on Patriachy Prudy, the starting point of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. The influence of the novel is equally evident inside, with painted scenes from the story up on the walls, amongst shelves covered with books and other random objects like microscopes, children's toys and family photos.

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

It's like being in a family home, and looking out of the thick-curtained windows to see the skaters on the frozen Patriarch's Ponds makes the restaurant feel even cozier.

The main draw of Margarita is not the food, but a trio of musicians who, with changes of line-up, have been performing every night almost since the restaurant's opening. In the early days, customers used to be entertained by a rock and roll group. But legend has it that when one of the members didn't turn up, the restaurant's ma­nager went to the Moscow Conservatory and grabbed the first violinist she found. He went down a storm, and the tradition of classically trained musicians at the café was born.

The trio, made up of two violinists and a pianist - all-female on the evening I visited with friends - perform, with breaks, from 8 to 12 o'clock. If you're in the restaurant at this time, 100 rubles per person will be added to your bill as cover charge, which is crazy-good value for the kind of performance you'll get. As we waited for our food, they went from jazz improvisation to Vivaldi's Winter to Life is a Cabaret. At one point the musicians handed out yoghurt drink bottles, which were sadly not a freebee drink - I'm a tramp for Actimel - but rather filled with nuts so we could shake along as they played Toreador from Bizet's Carmen.

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

Sitting behind the trio made it nigh-on impossible to get served when they were playing, but there were regular breaks for them to take a breather and us to grab the waitresses' attention.

The menu is comprised of the usual soups, salads, meat and fish. The highlight of the menu was the comedy translation of the wine list, which advertises Wines African, French Wins and Japanese Vins, before finally ending up with Italian Wines. Whoever wrote it presumably guessed that with four attempts, one of them was bound to be right.

The food itself was nothing to Facebook home about, though starters of borshch and tomato and mozzarella salad were fairly good, the salad coming with some deliciously sharp dressing. A plate of blini was, well, a plate of blini. A main course of chicken and vegetable salad was unexciting but perfectly edible, as was the double chocolate cake we shared for desert. There are also a wide range of cocktails and beers, as well as coffees if you're stopping in during the day.

Restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Overview

Margarita is a good place to go with families or in large groups, though making a reservation is absolutely essential if you're to have any chance of getting a table in the evening. The food is average, the interior isn't glitzy, but with the help of the musical trio and comfortable atmosphere the café really works. We sat there for three hours and barely noticed the time pass. Here's to another couple of decades of Café Margarita.

WHERE: 28, Malaya Bronnaya Ul. Tel: 699 6534

chyot, please!

Borshch - 210 rubles

Tomato and mozzarella salad - 310 rubles

Chicken and vegetable salad - 410 rubles

Blini with sour cream - 150 rubles

Double chocolate cake - 180 rubles

Screwdriver - 120 rubles