10 of the best Moscow restaurants

 ‘Moscow is in the middle of a food renaissance,” says Karina Baldry, a Muscovite chef and an author, now a Londoner. Whereas a decade ago rocket salads, Argentine steaks and sushi were all the rage, now – because of economic sanctions and a renewed patriotic mood – high calibre chefs are rediscovering their Slavic roots. They have started to use forgotten or newly created ingredients, such as local marbled beef and Russian mozzarella, and old cooking methods, involving the use of pechka ovens. For most Russians, eating out is still a special occasion, so even the most “democratic” places (a popular term to refer to more relaxed, less exclusive places) invest in expensive design, fabric napkins and table service. With some 12,000 restaurants in this sprawling city, we asked six Muscovite gourmands for their favourites.

“Venture outside of the touristy centre by taking the metro to Avtozavodskaya station for this gastronomical street,” says chef Karina Baldry who grew up in Moscow during Soviet times. “The food courts of my youth were either bare-shelved or exclusively for the top party echelons.” By contrast, StrEAT offers more than 30 street food stalls (mainly start-ups or small chains) from across the world: Lavka sells Dagestan-style flat pies (£1 a slice), and Crimean oysters; Kurkuma is very popular with a younger crowd for its version of Indian tikka masala, despite Russians traditionally being spice-averse. Opened in April 2018, in the not-quite-gentrified neighbourhood, StrEAT offers affordable prices (£3-£10 per dish) in a communal setting with diners sharing long tables. Karina recommends Georgian khinkali dumplings, pot-bellied pleated parcels with a mixture of beef and pork inside: “To eat them, you hold the dumpling by its doughy knot and carefully bite to suck the stock juices first, then munch on the rest. Delicious.”

Uhvat

The word uhvat refers to a long-handled wooden utensil used to slide food in and out of a pechka, a wood-fired oven found in many Russian houses until the late 19th century. Uhvat is one of the restaurants leading the resurgence in traditional Slavic cooking, with slow-cooked dishes such as pumpkin kashas (a type of porridge) with honey and linden dressing (£3.50), baked roe with pickled bramble (£14) schchi soups with fermented cabbage and chichelindas, an old recipe for pate, here made with ox tail (£5). Don’t leave without tasting toplyonoe moloko, a thick creamy dessert made by baking milk for several hours. The pechka oven features in many Russian fairytales – the Baba Yaga witch shoves children into ovens – and takes the centre stage at Uhvat. Daily rituals, such as using goose feathers to dust out the ashes, enhance the magical atmosphere.

Recommended by Pavel Syutkin, food historian, blogger and author of the USSR Cook Book

Oblomov

Tile-clad fireplaces, huge pechka ovens, plush chairs: Oblomov recreates the world of well-heeled and well-fed merchants of 19th century Russia. Oblomov is a character in the eponymous classic novel by Ivan Goncharov. There’s so much attention to detail that even the pet parrot here swears in literary Russian. However, the menu is much more than gimmickry. For a stylish lunch on a budget, start with home-pickled porcini mushrooms (£7), followed by veal and lardo borscht (£5) with half a dozen (“no less!” the menu says) little meat pies (£6). Make sure you’ve space for some home-made wild strawberry ice-cream for pudding (£5).

Severyane

“When non-Russian friends visit me in Moscow I try to show them Russia beyond its matryoshka dolls” says Alexander Sysoev, founder of the Russian Restaurant Festival. Alexander suggests starting the day at Severyane (which means “northerners”, referring to the Russian north that has been piquing the interest of Moscow chefs lately). There are twists on traditional cuisine, such as pike caviar on poached eggs (£4), blinis with Russian pastrami (£5), eclairs with crab (£11) from the Kamchatka peninsula (a region that is closer to Tokyo than to Moscow). The dimly lit atmosphere – “a cross between a Siberian hut and Hogwarts, with shaman music” as Alexander puts it – and breakfast until 4pm, makes Severyane a good option for those who’ve been partying the night before. If you come back in the evening (you should, for the slow-roasted duck with apples, £10, for example), order vodka “after which any soul would Russify,” adds Alexander.

Lepim-varim

This is Russian fast food par excellence: the dumplings are made from scratch on-site – “Lepim-varim” means shaping and boiling. One of a small chain specialising in pelmeni (a Russian version of ravioli), options include “uncle from Kamchatka” (king crab from the far east of Russia), “a mad couple” (venison and boar) and “the Caucasian prisoner” (stretchy Georgian Suluguni cheese). Order at the counter and give your name, just like in Starbucks. Regular long queues prove the success of the concept: from students to government officials and businessmen. “Ravioli are fine, of course, but pelmeni are so much better,” says Alexander.

Ottepel

“I was too little to remember Soviet realities but at Ottepel my genetic memory kicks in, registering such details as classic Soviet bevelled glasses and a separate menu section of buterbrody open sandwiches,” says Muscovite foodie Katerina Afonchenkova. These sandwiches (recently renamed bruschettas on the menu) were typical of Soviet canteens, with toppings such as rye with Latvian sprats, or herring and baked beetroot. Ottepel means thaw, referring to the period from 1953 to 1964 under Nikita Khrushchev when the communist regime was relaxed. This kind of nostalgia for the “good old Soviet days” can so easily be overdone with kitsch design elements – the venue is the restored Soviet exhibition pavilion after all – but Ottepel manages to get the balance right. The menu is vaguely Europeanised, but try some reinterpreted Soviet classics, like beetroot borscht soup with duck (£5) or fried potato cakes with mushrooms and marinated onions (£6).

Staff canteen at Arbatskaya metro station

Few know that you can dine deep within the belly of Moscow’s famous palatial metro system (the first lines were built in the 1930s under Stalin). These staff canteens mainly serve train drivers and metro personnel, but are also open to public. One of the quirkiest is Buffet Number 11 (canteens, shops and many other things were numbered during Soviet times) within Arbatskaya station. In a 1930s style, with cashiers wearing starched caps and walls covered in old-school propaganda posters, the menu has traditional Soviet “complex lunches”, including a vitaminnyj salad of shredded carrots and cabbage, a plate of borscht and light cheesecakes with fruit compote. The prices are Soviet-style too, £3-5 for the lunch menu.

Pasticceria Don Giulio

“The best cannoli in Moscow” states Dmitrij Alekseyev, a food journalist. The bakery and cafe, which also has a satellite restaurant, was set up by expat Italians in the 1990s. The pastries are made in-house daily with Russian ricotta, and strike that perfect Sicilian balance of crispy dough, light cream, citrus and dark chocolate. Try the ricotta cheese in syrniki, a type of cheesecake served with pistachio cream (£3.50). Soups are popular lunch options here, like borlotti beans with sun dried tomatoes (£3) or try the homemade sausages served with sliced oranges (£5.50). Risotto starts from £5.30. The jolly atmosphere created by Giulio, the owner, is what brings many punters back from Muscovite hipsters to Italian expats longing for dishes without dill (the herb Russians use like seasoning). Prices are chilled too, with small mark ups on wines – nothing short of a miracle in the centre of Moscow.

Dorogomilovsky market

\How to experience Russian chic on the cheap? Come to Dorogomilovsky food market (Moscow’s equivalent of London’s Borough Market) at around 10am and get a baguette from Khlebnaya Kroshka (The Breadcrumb), then top with slices of wild salmon, smoked on alder or apple tree chips from fish stall 355c (numbers are sometimes used instead of names); or fetch a peeled pomegranate to go with a lepyoshka flatbread stuffed with lots of herbs.

Cafe at the Kyrgyzstan embassy

You could spend weeks trawling through varieties of dumplings across Moscow, from Siberian pelmeni to Georgian khinkali. Some of the best are manti, dished up in the canteen of the embassy of Kyrgyzstan, the Central Asian country on the ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean. These parcels have wrinkly dough and are filled with juicy minced lamb. “The meat comes from animals normally fed on grass and wild thyme,” Arusya says. The filling must have a generous amount of lamb fat, so best if you have them with a mildly sparkling ayran yoghurt drink or hot tea. The somewhat outdated interior of the restaurant and waitresses in colourful traditional headscarfs make the setting all the more authentic. “Like sitting in a cafe somewhere in the Near East,” adds Arusya.