It's warm, even warmer: spring revival in Moscow restaurants
The early spring that has come to Moscow not only lifts the mood, but also awakens the appetite, so that the restaurateurs have really hot days. By the warm season, the gastronomic life of the capital has been noticeably enriched with new conceptual projects, tasting sets and interesting menu updates. The most striking and notable of them can be found in the traditional Izvestia review.
Taste on stage
The restaurant at the theater is not the most popular genre in the capital, but the creators of the new Artist space decided to take a chance. The institution was opened in the Moscow Oleg Tabakov Theater, the famous "Tabakerka". At the helm is the same team that did Due Forni and Biwon, but they promise that the new project will be more friendly in terms of prices. It was announced as a place where you can visit not only before or after the performance, but also come specially for a romantic dinner, a friendly meeting or to celebrate some event.
Beef tenderloin tagliata with truffle sauce and arugula
Mido Mustafa, an Egyptian chef who is well known to the Moscow public from the Biwon and Pescatore projects, is responsible for the gastronomic direction. In his new project, he focuses on European cuisine, which he complements with Asian accents. This approach makes it easy to move between culinary schools that are in high demand in Moscow, without limiting yourself to a single tradition.
Salmon carpaccio with shiso leaves
The appetizer section opens with a proven classic in Mustafa's interpretation: salmon tartare is served with eggplant puree, beef tartare is served with truffle aioli, and salmon carpaccio is served with shiso leaves. Among the hot appetizers, Italy dominates — classic eggplant parmigiano, tender tuna scottato with eggplant puree and putanesca sauce, as well as crispy fritto misto.
Venetian liver with mashed potatoes
Special attention should be paid to pasta — orecchiette cacho e pepe with shrimp or green linguini with zucchini and shrimp. Karaage quail with aromatic truffle sauce and Venetian liver with mashed potatoes claim to be potential hits in the hot dish.
In the dessert menu, you should pay attention to the Tiramisu "Restaurato" — another tribute to the Italian classics - the chef's signature burnt cheesecake and classic chocolate fondue.
Food for the mind
The opening of the Inspiro Neurobistro project, which promises to demonstrate a completely new standard of conscious gastronomy without meat, fish, seafood, alcohol and sugar, was postponed for several years, and finally the restaurant opened its doors in Khamovniki near the estate of Leo Tolstoy. The neighborhood is quite symbolic, because, as you know, the great Russian writer was one of the preachers of the ethics of vegetarianism. Inspiro Neurobistro, led by the project's ideologist Artyom Spiro, develops Tolstoy's ideas in a new way and, as indicated in the menu, starts from the concept of neuropeducation— a field that studies "the effect of nutrition on brain function, cognitive functions, emotional state and general human health." According to the authors of the project, when creating the dishes, they took into account the recommendations of experts from Sechenov University. The restaurant has a concept store with its own products - enzymes, bread, sauces, ready—made salads and sandwiches, as well as drinks based on seasonal fruits and wild plants.
Koji buckwheat
The joint menu of Artyom Spiro and brand chef Kirill Gubin consists of dishes prepared from seasonal plant products grown in the nearest regions, as well as on their own farm in the Altai Republic. One of the key ingredients is the crested hedgehog mushroom, which replaces meat in many positions, including olivier salad with barrel cucumbers, cedar sour cream and flaxseed mayonnaise, with which you can start exploring the menu.
Tartare from the hedgehog
Another starter is tempeh hummus (a popular snack from Indonesian cuisine), made from peas and chickpeas fermented in our own laboratory. The pasta opens with lemon and nutty notes and is served with slightly scorched broccoli al dente cabbage and fermented natto made from sunflower seeds and flax. Hummus is accompanied by a simple flatbread made from whole wheat with sourdough, which is also baked in the restaurant. You can continue your acquaintance with appetizers with red bean paste mixed with mustard sauce. The natural sweetness of the legumes contrasts interestingly with the sourness of the fermented gooseberry berries. It is complemented with a cream of blackened garlic.
Tempeh hummus with natto seeds and cabbage from the fire
As a main course, you can order a cabbage steak with lentils with tomato sauce and cedar sour cream. The tempeh kebab, diced and baked over an open fire, also deserves special attention. Coconut fat is placed between the pieces, in fact, slices of young coconut, processed with pepper and garlic, and then smoked on oak chips for several hours. They really taste a bit like classic lard.
Cabbage steak
Light desserts without sugar are a completely natural extension of the concept. A pie with pieces of pear caramelized in jerusalem artichoke syrup is complemented from the inside with miso paste with pear puree, which makes the dessert even more balanced and very light. Chocolate lovers should try the local version of tiramisu. The outer shell of the dessert is made from beans purchased in Ecuador, with the addition of jerusalem artichoke syrup. The filling is white miso paste with layers of vanilla cream and small biscuits made of wheat flour soaked in coffee liqueur.
We are not sure that you will feel any mental enlightenment in one visit, but you are definitely guaranteed to feel a pleasant lightness in your stomach after dinner.
The Basque School
Over the past year, the culinary map of the Patriks has changed significantly. An impressive number of different projects have been closed. However, after a very short time, new establishments began to appear in their place. So in March, Bocconchino was replaced by OMA, which appeals to the gastronomic heritage of the Basque Country, with its good Italian cuisine.
Grilled scallop
We are talking about a project by Mikhail Gokhner (El Gaucho), which, both in its general concept and its vibe, should resemble the Basque men's gastroclub txoko. Time will tell how far such a deliberately brutal format will go to the patrons of the Patriots. Chef Alexander Tretinnikov is responsible for the kitchen, and he knows firsthand how cooking is done in San Sebastian and the surrounding area. Of course, everything here is built on meat and around meat, and also on fire and around fire.
Beef tartare with truffle
There are no complicated dishes, no original combinations of ingredients, or intricate serving in OM. Everything is emphatically simple, even artless. The menu includes sessina and jamon, tatrates and steaks, cucumbers and oxtails, croquettes and empanadas. The choice of steaks and cuts is as wide as possible, there are both fresh and with long exposure in the dry maturation chamber. It is especially prepared with bone marrow and orzo. The tails are stewed in Argentine malbec, and they are also added to a rich Andalusian chowder, to which freshly baked coca tortilla with herbs is excellent. Croquettes are stuffed with shrimp, and empanadas are stuffed with beef and cheese.
There are also some seafood on the menu, but more for the assortment. Among the most interesting items are Galician octopus and baked paella with crab. The dessert section is very tiny. However, the Basque cheesecake with a burnt crust turned out to be quite canonical, and the meringue siruvella with prunes and walnuts was simply delicious.
Farmer's gastroconstructor
Vegetables and fruits, berries and herbs, meat and seafood, regional, local and seasonally available. From all this variety, the chef of the Twins Garden restaurant, Vitaly Saveliev, assembled a set designer and named it "Farm". The name promises a gradual replacement of individual ingredients with what will appear on the restaurant's own farm in the Yaroslavl region with the onset of summer. In this sense, the set promises to be not just long-lasting, but constantly updated.
Crispy shrimp
However, the "design" nature of the set is not limited to this. Five of the eight serves are available to choose from. So the guest has every chance to put together quite a lot of his own gastronomic puzzles. And it's also convenient to take such a set together — then you can try, if not all at once, then a lot.
Donut with pastrami
It all starts with a delicate northern shrimp tartare with slices of seasonal fruits and a sauce based on the yolk with chili. Mango currently serves as the fruit base, but in the future it will be replaced by fresh strawberries, which seems to be only better. The second serve is a crispy doughnut with goat cheese mousse and baked jerusalem artichoke, pastrami and truffle peach, spicy and delicately spicy.
Scallop with grapes
Then the guest finds himself at a fork in the road, making a difficult choice between cold and hot snacks. Among the first are two tartars — scallop with aioli from turkey marinated in soy sauce with yuzu grapes and beef on a wonderful steamed bun heated in meat broth. The bun, by the way, is formed in the form of a bone – it is rare that a "bone" can be eaten with tartare.
Tartare on a bone
This is followed by mussels baked in seaweed with spicy salted tomatoes, and crab cake with seasonal mushrooms and baked leeks. Salted tomatoes play great with mussels, emphasizing their texture and adding spice to them. And the crab cake is served in a rich creamy tomato broth, which just begs for a slice of freshly baked bread.
Mussels baked in seaweed
However, the gastronomy in the main course is no easier. A juicy chicken breast with pistachios and parmesan cheese can be preferred to a shrimp chop with a fresh salad, and a textured halibut steak can be preferred to a tender beef tenderloin accompanied by Korean carrots. Or vice versa.
In any case, after the main course, there is a small entree in the form of yogurt granite with dandelion jam – an easy stop before a beautiful finish. For dessert, you will have to choose a "tuber" in the form of a cherry cake with honeysuckle, or an "onion" - profiterole with English cream, confit of wild strawberries and sour herbs. Profiterole, by the way, is served on herbal gazpacho with such a fresh and vibrant taste that you immediately want to ask for another portion.
Gastronomic landscapes
Brand chef of Björn restaurant Andrey Fedoseev continues to search for new facets of Northern cuisine. He assembled his new set from dishes that somehow play out the theme of the natural landscapes of the Russian North. The gastronomic journey begins in the "Forest", embodied on a plate with crispy mushrooms and porcini mushroom cream with rye crumbs and fried yeast.
The Forest Course
Then the guests are invited to go to the "Sea", which is responsible for the low-temperature sea cuttings, supplemented with pickled fucus and an emulsion of sea urchin caviar.
The Sea Course
The third course, "Vegetable Garden", is represented by turnips baked in kaolin clay, accompanied by chervil and parsley cream, fried kale and a drop of lingonberry jam.
The Vegetable Garden Course
Next, each other is successively replaced by a "Meadow" in the form of leek baked in hay with goat cheese sauce, a "River", for which muksun fillet with calamus marinade is responsible, and a "Field", presented with fermented chickpea kebab with steppe morels and baked pepper sauce.
The journey ends in the "Valley", presented in the format of ptifours – blueberry marmalade, biscuits with birch charcoal and caramel, honey in honeycombs and sweets from spruce shoots.
The Valley Course
The set turned out to be whole, gastronomic and quite satisfying, despite the complete absence of meat. And muksun and baked turnip — both in theory and in terms of the quality of execution — fully deserve to be included in the main menu over time.
Around vegetables
The traditional lean menu was presented at Sage by chef Dmitry Golenin. Every year, Lent becomes an occasion for him to experiment with unusual cooking and serving options for vegetables. The chef works with additional restrictions, presenting as a result not just a lean, but a vegan version with its own semantic centers. This time, legumes and mushrooms have become a kind of core around which the menu is built. Celery, one of the most beloved products of the Shin, was also present. A distinctive feature was the well-observed balance between gastronomy and the comfortable simplicity of the resulting dishes.
Celery with chickpea cream and mushroom beetroot
For bright discoveries and unusual flavor combinations, for example, celery with pickled prunes is responsible, accompanied by gravy, which differs little in texture from meat. Due to prolonged cooking, including pickling, celery completely loses its recognizable and unloved taste, which makes the dish quite versatile. A delicate carpaccio of eringa mushrooms is given a pleasant piquancy by pickled onions and black mustard.
Eringa mushroom carpaccio
Those who are not particularly inclined to experiment, and prefer a clear and satisfying (despite all the restrictions) lean meal, will enjoy the delicate creamy white beans with vegetable relish and baked potato gnocchi with vegetables and tomato sauce. However, do not be deceived — bold moves have not been avoided here either. For example, the broth after cooking chickpeas plays the role of gluing texture in gnocchi.
Another striking feature is a dessert with coconut ice cream and hot pepper, which looks indistinguishable from desserts prepared without food restrictions. It is crowned with a spectacular meringue made by Shin from whipped chickpea broth.
Imaginary Greece
Salmon with carrot and black sesame sauce, beef carpaccio with onion aioli, pasta with shrimp, anchovies and herbs, grilled langoustines with zucchini and cream bisque and beef cheek with ptitym and demiglass of dates – all these are quotes from the completely updated menu of the Louwo restaurant, presented in March by the new chef, Egor Kalinin, who previously worked at Asian establishments Cutfish, Amber and Tokyo. With his arrival, the project is being relaunched in a new concept and now offers guests Greek cuisine in its modern Moscow vision, where the connection with the national tradition becomes barely perceptible, and the main focus is on the refined simplicity of dishes familiar to Moscow gourmets.
Croquettes with shrimp and cream sponge
The menu opens with a large section of light snacks. The assorted dips for starters include Greek yogurt with basil and cucumbers, hummus with chickpea fries and guacamole with sun-dried tomatoes, which can be scooped up with crispy bean chips. Sweet Uzbek tomatoes are accompanied by date sauce labneh, bluefin tuna slices are delicately complemented with tomato salsa, and salmon carpaccio is accompanied by lemon dressing and capers. The green salad, which is mandatory for Moscow menus, has an interesting slight sourness of apples, and in the equally titular salad with crab, grilled avocado is very appropriate.
Assorted dips
The Asian chef's school makes itself felt in many dishes, but it is especially evident in the hot cauliflower appetizer with coconut sauce and honey. Middle Eastern touches are found in shrimp and cream sponge croquettes and haloumi pie with lamb meat and date sauce. In turn, octopus with sweet potato gratin and apple demiglas allows you to take a fresh look at the Mediterranean classics.
The sweet menu has its own intriguing finds, including chocolate olives, raspberry meringue with pistachio cream or pistachio cake with rose ice cream. To paraphrase a catch phrase from the old Soviet comedy "The Wedding," we can now confidently say that Moscow Greece has everything.
Two in one
The classic Italian dessert tiramisu is well known to everyone, and it is difficult to make something fundamentally new with it - you can play with the serving or the shades of taste, leaving the idea of a delicate and airy sweet dish unchanged. Its base is a savoyardi sponge cake soaked in coffee (sometimes with liqueur added), and a cream based on mascarpone and yolks. Il Matto restaurant was able to rethink tiramisu in a new way, preserving the familiar combination of flavors, but in an unexpected pizza form.
Tiramisu Pizza
— Instead of savoyardi, we use pizza dough: the cake is baked until crisp and thus becomes a dry "sponge cake" in our interpretation, — said Alexey Malofeev, chef of Il Matto. — We wanted to get away from the banal sweet pizza with chocolate and berries, so we took the classic tiramisu as a basis and carefully reworked it.
The taste of the new transformer dessert really resembles tiramisu: it has a crispy base, coffee notes and a delicate cream. It turns out to be a familiar combination of ingredients, but in the format of a dish that is not at all associated with a sweet table.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
