Restaurants in Northern European Russia
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Pogrebok
Pogrebok offers meat dishes, pizzas, kebabs and even curry (sometimes) washed down with excellent home-brewed ales in an attractive vaulted basement wallpapered with old newspapers and furnished with heavy wooden benches. There’s a brilliant billiard room too. It’s directly behind 121 Sovetsky, but access is from a side alley.
reviewed
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A
Karelskaya Gornitsa
Karelskaya Gornitsa has rustic-village atmosphere, efficient costumed waiters and excellent Karelian cuisine including a superbly creamy lokhikeytto (archetypal Karelian salmon soup, R230). Without a reservation you just might get a seat in the appealing if cramped bar area. Notice the frog-croak soundtrack in the toilets.
reviewed
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B
Restoran Bobroff
This jolly tavern-restaurant opens into a small period-style dining room with formal portraits and Dutch-style tiled fireplace. Its home-brewed ales are eminently quaffable (try the ‘copper’ beer), and menu items range from beef in bilberries to delightfully subtle cod in langoustine sauce (R230). Evening music can get loud.
reviewed
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C
Puzatiy Patsyuk
This well-executed rustic-effect nostalgia restaurant serves top-notch food including duck in a wonderfully tart apple-and-cowberry sauce ( kachka s yablykami ). The menu (in Ukrainian with Russian translations) is amusingly presented like a tsarist-era police report. At weekend evenings there’s a R50 cover charge.
reviewed
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D
Rvanye Parusa
The fun, slightly silly sailing-ship theme upstairs comes with netting and golden mermaids. Meals range from potted elk (R195) and reindeer in blueberries (R195) to some good-value creamy fish dishes (R220). Downstairs choose from pizza, kebabs or steak washed down with beer from their microbrewery.
reviewed
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Hausbrandt Cafe
Central Vologda’s most appealing café-restaurant is constantly bustling with shopping families and relaxed young professionals. Plate-lickingly good Florentine tagliatelle in bacon-and-cream sauce is nicely complemented by the mildly peppery Chilean house wine (R130 per glass).
reviewed
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E
La Parisienne
Lounge in cream-leather armchairs around hefty central pillars in this grand yet comfortably contemporary café-restaurant serenaded by Piaf or Jean-Jacques Goldman. Ideal for a Bosnian coffee breakfast or artistically presented banana tempura (R80) but the sushi is a little limp.
reviewed
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F
Restoran Fregat
A full-sized harp is the unexplained centrepiece of this suave, high-ceilinged restaurant with charcoal-grey walls and hip waiting staff dressed to match. There’s also a more casual café section and an upstairs bar featuring cubist-style art and various themed evenings.
reviewed
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G
Restoran Pomorsky
Good, if pricey, fish and game dishes served in log-cabin–effect alcoves set around a water feature with bridge, nets and hazel fencing. The restaurant is oddly hidden on the rear 3rd floor of the office building above the Polina Café.
reviewed
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H
Restoran Spasatelny Krug
Classy but friendly, this stone-walled restaurant in the Seamen's Club serves lots of good fish, seafood and meat, and has a fine list of European wines. Service can be a bit slow as many dishes are prepared to order, but they're worth the wait.
reviewed
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Traktir Kruzhka
Jolly, bustling mid-market restaurant with rural-Russia feel upstairs and cherry-blossom oriental touches beneath. A giant log bar is decorated with pots, pans and the odd axe. Food curiosities include fruit-and-chocolate sushi.
reviewed
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Paratov
This floating restaurant behind the Sea & River Terminal serves delicious sushi and other Japanese food in a spick-and-span stainless steel environment. A pictorial menu saves you having to grapple with Japanese in Cyrillic.
reviewed
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J
Restoran Petrovsky
Waiters in traditional Karelian dress serve some Karelian dishes in among a mainly Russian menu. The food is satisfying and the setting - several vaultlike dining areas with four to six tables each - has some atmosphere.
reviewed
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K
Kofeynya U Poliny
U Poliny has everything a good café should - cheesecake, glacé fruit tarts, busy young staff bustling about, and a big choice of coffee and tea. Easily the best café north of St Petersburg.
reviewed
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Kafe Lesnaya Skazka
Filling if hardly gourmet, the soup–salad–fishcake set ‘biznes lunches’ cost only R90 in this modest but friendly little café part of which occupies a 1911 former chapel.
reviewed
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M
Alan
Curiously ornate but with friendly service, the Alan serves tasty Caucasian fare. Servings are not the hugest so order some delicious khichiny (cheese-filled flatbreads) to round things out.
reviewed
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Restaurant Mercury
Can be a blast with the right company. Effusive women will guide you to heavily laid-out tables and lavish you with attention while a band plays gypsy tunes (Vologda has a sizable Roma population).
reviewed
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O
Mama Mia
Cosy yet unpretentious and understandably popular, Mama Mia specialises in great, large pizzas and regional meat-and-berry dishes. Taste both by ordering reindeer ( olenina ) pizza.
reviewed
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P
Amerikanskoe Morozhenoe
Serves up locally produced versions of Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey and other favourites. Sundaes, milkshakes and fudge bars - is this heaven? Three scoops for around Rbl36 - it is!
reviewed
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Q
Kafe 70-Ye Gody
A few gently amusing mementoes of the ’70s including a laughing Brezhnev photo makes this more appealing than Petrozavodsk’s other plastic-cutlery stolovye.
reviewed
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R
Restoran Severny
This glitzy hotel restaurant features dance shows, folk shows and varied live or DJ music on different nights of the week. The Russian and international food is pretty good too.
reviewed
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S
Bar Neubrandenburg
The Neubrandenburg's coffee-house section has some of the best cakes, pastries (and coffee) in town. Note that despite the address, the entrance is actually on pr Lenina.
reviewed
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Tsarskaya Okhota
The good-value Russian cuisine here is highly rated by the locals. Furs and hunting trophies are features of the décor, and an angry stuffed bear guards the toilets.
reviewed
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Ogorod
Warmly attractive café that keeps prices low by serving meals cafeteria-style. There’s a second branch beneath a 24-hour supermarket at ul Gertsena 20.
reviewed
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Zhar Pizza
Popular in summer for (rather bready) pizza served on a garden terrace that’s partly protected from road noise by trees and a glassed-in summerhouse.
reviewed
