THE DISH: Teatr
27 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa//Tel. 240 2496//Open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.//Menu in Russian only//Dinner for dual 2,100 rubles ($65.84)
Published: Aug 22, 2012 (Issue # 1723)
Playing with food
Stepping into Teatr, a new restaurant-cafe subsequent to a Theater Estrady, guest competence be hold by a prickling annoy sensed when entering a grill that is roughly totally empty. At 9 in a evening, there were usually dual other diners, who had tucked themselves divided in one of a corners of a singular rectilinear room. The white interior with extreme mortar and smart chandeliers boring down a high ceilings did not assistance to palliate a cold atmosphere. If a cafeteria resembles a theater, it is usually since guest themselves feel as if they are entering a stage.
Polite waitresses stood around a small superfluously, trailing diners’ each gesticulate like spectators of an insinuate play. In a high, echoing room, filled usually by low nonetheless not really balmy chill-out-music, they could follow each word of people’s conversations, even from afar. On a upside, this means that a staff can be addressed from anywhere in a whole room. This plan was used to ask an English menu, that a servers brought immediately, nonetheless it incited out to be usually a drinks menu — rather unhelpful as not usually was there no booze on offer, nonetheless no ethanol during all was available, as a grill non-stop in May and has not nonetheless performed a booze license.
The menu options were of a some-more colorful variety, trimming from borsch to gazpacho, from Polish zander to beef Stroganoff, from panna cotta to a berry cocktail. The prices — between 450 and 690 rubles ($14.10 to 21.60) for a categorical — were as lofty as a interior. A beating for vegetarians is that all prohibited dishes on offer enclose possibly fish or meat. A satisfaction was a summer menu, that featured cold soups and salads that were as strange as cold spinach with a fruit sauce.
An advantage to being such waste diners in a grill was that a dishes were served swiftly. The champignon cappuccino soup (320 rubles, $10) had an engaging spumous coherence and was a whisk for a mouth, nonetheless a aftertaste was reduction refined. The gazpacho (290 rubles, $9), was easily flashy with spices and a Grossini bread stick, and slid down a throat some-more like tomato extract with a splash of onion and pepper.
An nearing image that hold what resembled flushed beige-colored marshmallows with a kraken-like, undulating array of salsa traces incited out to be a salmon and zander medallions served with a unfeeling puree and booze salsa (450 rubles, $14.10). The medallions had an acceptable unimportant taste, nonetheless were somewhat dry, and a salmon and zander flavors were disappointingly tough to detect, as was a booze in a sauce. The unfeeling puree, on a other hand, was tasty and a incomparable apportionment of it would have positively been appreciated. A some-more rhythmical choice incited out to be a elementary salad with yogurt salsa (290 rubles, $9) that a vegetarian in a celebration reverted to given a miss of meat- and fish-free mains.
For wish of alcohol, a dishes finished adult being accompanied by fruit cocktails (ginger-lemon and strawberry-pineapple, both 150 rubles, $4), that dominated a counterpoint with a delicious courses, as they were ripping with glucose. The desserts were a late issue of a cooking during Teatr. Not usually were they served to us when a grill had strictly already closed, nonetheless a panna cotta and berry cocktail with vanilla ice cream and booze had a fine, watchful ambience that smoothed out a former imbalances and enabled us to leave a grill roughly appeased.
Although a grill resembles a playhouse overcharged with mortar and chandeliers, a costumes of a dishes were easily decorated.
Had it not been for this panopticon outcome of a unfilled room, and had indeed some of a adjacent theater’s actors forsaken in, as an worker pronounced they infrequently do, a knowledge competence not have been too bad.