Eating out in Moscow

I rarely eat out in Moscow. This is mostly due to childcare costs when hiring a baby sitter. To spend two hours in a restaurant, you need about one hour to get there and one hour to get back for a leisurely unrushed meal. That amounts to four hours of a paid babysitter, plus the cost of your meal out. Also, the cost of eating out here and the quality of food is a huge gamble. If a restaurant is good, then paying a babysitter for four hours is defiantly worth it, if a restaurant id bad then your money is burned.

This weekend, we ate out at a restaurant called The Eastern rooms in Vostochnaya Komnata, Smolensky Passage. We have lived abroad now for seven years firstly in Slovakia. Eating out there was very cheap and very good. Here in Moscow, you have a good choice of restaurants but they are an experience. I mostly eat in McDonald's, not because I regard it as a fine eating establishment but it hits the spot when you are hungry and stop caring about your cholesterol levels. It pains me to eat there out of snobbery and an American fast food loathing but I am a bitch to easy filling food.

I have a love of curry (Spicy Asian food from India), I can almost say I love curry more than sex, in fact I can almost say I love all food more than sex, but then again I am getting older and my urges have jumped ship to another pleasure boat of desire food. In my experience, eating out in Moscow is rather a disappointment. The food is usually average, the price high and the waiting service can be bad and often rude. At The Eastern room, the food was very good, however the service was very irritating and seems to be a common experience in Russia at many restaurants. The food arrived very promptly and was hot and delicious. I had Chicken Tikka Masala, vegetable rice, spicy creamy chick peas and garlic naan bread washed down with a small non alcoholic beer followed by a bottle of water. The non alcoholic beer was 200 rubles ! (five euro) and like many places here, we had to buy bottles water that came in small plastic bottles rather than one large bottle. The meal for two came to 2,200 Russian rubles (92 Dollars, 64 Euro). Good value by Moscow standards.

The food was good but as I said, the service was typical of Moscow. As soon a dish was finished on our table or a glass was empty, the waitress would come to the table and take it away. My plate was taken away before my wife had finished her meal. The waitress would appear like a genie and disappear to remove plates or glasses while we were talking, she even wiped the table while we were eating. The restaurant had us and one other table occupied, apart from that it was totally empty. Maybe she was bored? In my opinion, when you eat a meal you don't want to be bothered by waiting staff taking away your plates before you have finished. I could feel my left eye nervously twitching and we had to ask her to leave us alone until we had both finished our meal. I have noticed this habit is fairly usual in former Socialist countries. Often, you can be at the table in a restaurant and you have both ordered your food. Your partners food will be arrive first and when they have almost finished eating there food, your order will arrive. You put your knife and fork down on your empty plate and it will be taken away in an instant by a waiter. I have even seen the most evil mistake in the world, red wine served cold from a restaurant fridge, although this was in Slovakia and not in Russia I am happy to say. I am thinking of starting a staff training business on how to serve customers in restaurants, I reckon I could increase profits at thousands of restaurants in Moscow and in other former socialist countries.

Despite my criticism of The Eastern room, the food is very good, fresh and perfect. Eating there is easy, finding it is not. To get to this restaurant you must first walk to the end of the Old Arbat. Turn left at McDonald's and go under the road to get to the other side of the street. Take the steps on the right out of the underpass and walk across the zebra crossing. You will pass a posh women's underwear shop on your left, walk into the posh shopping centre 'Smolensky Passage' and walk to your right, go through some double doors on the ground floor, turn right at the lifts, turn left, go down some stairs, turn right past a glass fish tank that has one very large lonely crab in it, (if you tap his tank window, he will point a claw in the right direction) go through a Chinese restaurant, go up the stairs and the restaurant is on your left opposite another restaurant. I have not made up these directions, they are true, as mad as it all sounds, try it and you will see. The shopping centre seems to have about two hundred security guards standing around doing absolutely nothing, so if you speak Russian, ask them if you get lost. There are no visible signs to say where the restaurant is.

The curry hunt is worth it, if you can tolerate a fly buzzing round your table while you try to eat some excellent food. This restaurant is far better and cheaper than The Taj Mahal in Moscow, that looks like an Indian whore house. However they don't give you free chapatis at The Eastern room. 'Free' is not a word that goes well with anything in Moscow.

I am inclined to think that Russian's would sell their own grandmother to make some money. They built a nuclear plant in Iran and invited the leader of North Korea over for tea but I digress. Go to a restaurant on recommendation, rather than take a gamble or your wallet and stomach may be very disappointed. Their business card has no website on it only a phone number: 937 84 23.

Note: if you are reading this a few months or years since I wrote this article as dated above, the restaurant is probably now closed and is now a shop store room or a public toilet. 

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