Moscow, you spoil us. The city is packed full of restaurants serving any type of cuisine at any time of day or night, with any sort of gimmick. But this week let's take a step away from the haute cuisine and newly-opened ventures now so easily found in the capital. It's time to make like John Major and get Back to Basics. It's time to rediscover the humble origins of eating-out in Moscow.
There can be few places better to do this than in the basement of Kievskiy Vokzal. In the bowels of a station there is a restaurant simply entitled "kafe." To find this room of hearty borshch and mugs of vodka, it is necessary to know exactly where you are going, so here are your directions. Walk to the front of the station, so you're opposite a circle of the world's flags. Turn to the main building and walk through the
door with an illuminated Kamera Khraneniya (safe deposit) sign above it, then down the steps in front of you. Continue straight ahead - you know you're going the right way if a sour-smelling drunk falls into your path and asks for a cigarette - until you reach the nameless, coca-cola sponsored kafe at the end of the corridor.
Now soak up the interior design, which can probably best be described as public toilet-chic. The public toilet vibe comes from the cream-tiled floor and sink in the corner of the room, while the "chic" is added by the jeweled mirrors and fake flowers draped around the counter. A splash of kitsch is provided by a mirrored ceiling and the combination of flashing lights and religious icons over the bar.
Perhaps I'm not selling this very well. So far this sounds like every other café in Moscow you would never be tempted to step in to. But here's the twist: at "kafe" the food is genuinely good, and outrageously cheap.
As well as a printed menu of soups, salads, meat and fish meals, there is also a board with the dishes of the day, which are generally traditional Russian foods like solyanka, olivie salad, stews and grechka. I would make a conservative estimate that at least 75 percent of the dishes advertised are not available at any given time, so rather than getting frustrated with repeatedly revising your order, I suggest you turn the experience into a game. Go to the counter with a friend, and try to clock up as many consecutive "nyets" as possible when asking if meals are available. The player with the most "nyets" before they place a valid order wins - bonus points if you manage to break the waitress's will and she ends up telling you what is on offer rather than just rejecting everything you suggest.
Then the meal. It is stodgy, fatty, and I dare say the meat is neither organic nor free-range, but it is pure comfort food. If I was fortunate enough to have a Russian babushka, the café's solyanka would remind me of how she used to make it, while their goulash is unexciting but satisfying enough to make up for it. Soups, salads and main dishes pass by in a whirl of salt, vinegar and starch, helped down with a tea-cup of vodka - here the standard measure is 100ml, which adds to the café's informal atmosphere. If the rest of your food hasn't already provided enough carbohydrates for one day, I recommend a slice of their moist carrot cake to round things off.
I felt just as satisfied with my meal in the nameless café as in restaurants ten times the price. Or maybe that's just the mugs of vodka talking. Either way, it's just the place to see another aspect of Mother Russia, in all her platskartniy glory.
By Theodore Merz
chyot, please!
Soups (borsh) - 50 rubles
Salads - 50 rubles
Main meals - 50 - 120 rubles
Cakes - 30 rubles
Mug vodka - 40 rubles
