Labyrinths of taste: which sets can be tried in the capital's restaurants
In the first months of 2025, several metropolitan restaurants launched new gastronomic sets at once. In search of inspiration, one of the chefs turned to ancient history, someone plunged headlong into another culture, and someone tried to understand himself more deeply. However, regardless of the chosen path, the results are noteworthy. The most interesting culinary narratives are in the Izvestia material.
Handmade work
Salmon, bluefin tuna, hamachi, botan shrimp, scallop, crab, marbled beef — the new omakase set at the metropolitan Self Edge Japanese is built around these exceptionally high-quality products. The format of the set assumes that guests never know in advance what exactly it will consist of. All decisions are made by the chef, depending on what is at his disposal at a given time. But omakase is not just food, it is, if you will, a philosophy that involves perfect culinary techniques, meditation, private communication, and a special aesthetic pleasure from watching the creation of a dish, as well as its appearance, aroma, and taste. Omakase requires both the chef and the guest to fully immerse themselves in the process, so it cannot be served as part of a regular service. They come to omakase on purpose.
Traditional omakase is focused on preserving the maximum purity of the taste of the original product. However, in recent years, a different approach has become increasingly common, involving a complex game of flavors that occurs when combining different ingredients. Nevertheless, it is important that even in such a gastronomic symphony, every single note is clearly distinguishable. This is exactly the way Self Edge went.
Brand chef Dmitry Tyan has prepared 15 pitches. It all starts with an oyster with tomato salsa, followed by a series of sushi and handrolls with different fillings, and ends with a dessert set in the form of deconstructed mochi with white chocolate, mango and passion fruit.
In addition to rice, fish, seafood and meat, several types of caviar, foie gras, beef jerky, ginger chips, sea urchin caviar, sea grapes and various sauces (from yuzu to bisque) are also used in the creation of dishes. The whole process takes about two and a half hours.
Omakase is served only three days during the month and only two servings per day.
The spool is small, but expensive
The chef of the Grand Cru restaurant, David Emmerle, has created a new chapter of his fascinating long-term gastronomy Pepite, which means "Nugget" in Russian. We are talking about three small appetizers — two cold and one hot, which are traditionally served in a three-tiered Limoges porcelain box, visually resembling a precious stone. Snacks are never repeated, only the form of serving remains unchanged.
The new trilogy is called Scallop and Crab. This time, guests are offered to start with a delicate Kamchatka crab salad with scallop, tangerine sauce, crunchy chicory leaves and vodka jelly with yuzu. This is followed by an elegant milfey of baked yellow beetroot with crab mousse, sour cream sauce and a spoonful of pike caviar.
At the end, Emmerle offers to taste fried ravioli with crab mousse, bottarga, a piece of Saint Jacques nut, spinach leaf and thick watercress sauce.
The new Pepite turned out to be emphatically elegant. As usual, a glass of champagne is recommended for it. However, a light meal can be completed with a cup of espresso from a special collection of Ethiopian coffee with the gentle name "Gera", which, due to its complex and refined organoleptics, will easily give odds to other wines.
The current version of Pepite will be valid for the next few months.
Note: there are also several new vegetarian options on the menu for Lent, which are likely to remain after Easter. In the appetizer section, you should pay attention to the salsify with caramelized endive, crispy gyoza sphere and watercress. In the hot dishes section, there is a chickpea fricassee with a bright palette of oriental spices in Uzbek tomato, which is topped with basil chips and seasoned with a thick and spicy tomato and olive oil sauce. And for dessert, tangerine and coconut sorbet with coconut cream and crumble of almond dough are served.
Gastronomic self-portrait
After a series of very extravagant, expressive, bold, and sometimes downright provocative sets, the chef of the Touch Chef's Place restaurant & Nikita Kuzmenko gave us something completely different. Calm, moderately complex, understandable, well-balanced, technically expertly executed food, which, however, clearly shows the recognizable style of the chef.
According to Kuzmenko's idea, each of the 12 dishes presents in one way or another — through ingredients, texture or taste — his own gastronomic experience, formed within wide boundaries from the classics to the avant-garde. It's not for nothing that the set is called an "Autograph".
Aniseed panna cotta with albino beluga caviar and citrus broth based on shellfish. Squid in souvide, with mushrooms and a puer tea-based broth. Hokkaido pumpkin in ginger marinade with yellow wine gel. Hash brownies with baked oyster, bone marrow and sesame sambal. Everything is quite intricate here.
But other positions, on the contrary, confidently strive for high simplicity. These are, for example, chicken pate with orange chutney, beef tenderloin with buckwheat gel and cereal popcorn, wellington with potato gratin stewed in duck fat, and even licorice root with caramel chocolate.
Each serving is served on a unique dish from the Gzhel Porcelain Factory, hand-painted and signed by the artist.
The set is available daily by prior reservation.
From edge to edge
It's no secret that chefs often draw inspiration from a wide variety of literary works. But Eduard Arkhipov, who heads the cuisine of the Chanoir Grand Cafe, turned to a completely different kind of work in search of ideas for creating a new set. We are talking about the monograph of the great Medieval historian Massimo Montanari "Hunger and abundance. The history of nutrition in Europe". The fundamental research covers a huge period from the third to the twentieth century and is devoted to the European food culture, which has always fluctuated between two poles — extreme scarcity and conspicuous luxury. This became the key idea of the set.
Arkhipov, who also called his creation "Hunger and Abundance," divided it into two parts — six innings each. Morels, the first spring greens, rye bread, snails and oysters, once considered synonymous with poverty, are responsible for his "Hunger". Everything here is quite restrained and even ascetic.
In "Abundance", on the contrary, brioche with butter, sterlet with chestnut velute, venison pie and black caviar, aged duck breast with fermented apples, parmentier with camembert, pan perdue (toast made from yesterday's bread) are served with whipped cream and strawberries. In this part, the food is plentiful and generous, all the dishes are complex, and in historical retrospect, the selection of ingredients is completely inaccessible to the vast majority of the population.
The two parts balance each other well — conceptually and gastronomically, as well as visually. Some are served on a rough stone, tree bark, or a bundle of hay, while others are served on an exquisite platter or in a silver casket. Each presentation is accompanied by a light cultural excursion. So the dinner turns out to be not only delicious, but also informative.
The set is served once a month.
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