with Marina Gladka

Updated "Petrovsky Brovar"

The Petrovsky Brovar country complex is experiencing a rebirth and delving into Russian cuisine. A bathhouse has been built here, a hotel is being prepared and tours of the establishment are given to guests - they proudly show the “sea hall”, the terrace and relics: an old Dutch chest of drawers, a mirror in a wrought-iron frame, a bench on which Peter I himself may have sat, a buffet with huge clawed paws and a carved clock.

From an oil portrait in the main hall, the emperor strictly monitors the quality of Russian and European dishes. Food on the wide tables is served exclusively by young men in cream shirts - there are no plans to hire waitresses in the near future, because in pre-revolutionary times this craft was performed exclusively by men.

As an aperitif, quail liver pate (65 UAH) is served with croutons and fluffy slices of homemade onion bread. Crispy croutons with pate are good for salads, and soft bread spread with it is pleasant to wash down with sweet black tea. The most striking Russian dish on the autumn menu from the establishment’s chef Svetlana Shapran is the Pozharskie cutlets (64 UAH) the size of a medium apple. In the menu next to them is a link to the famous cutlets mentioned in the correspondence of Alexander Pushkin with Sergei Sobolevsky. The cutlets are really tasty, without onions, garlic or spices - just a mix of pork and chicken, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Meat products are served with porcini mushroom and cream sauce.

The “Russian salad” (75 UAH) listed on the menu has nothing in common with Olivier, although it is seasoned with homemade mayonnaise. It includes grilled vegetables, herbs and veal. The salad is sprinkled with almond flakes and garnished with fried mushrooms and chives.

Warm duck breast salad with honey-mustard sauce (95 UAH) served with Conference pear, which invariably shows itself well in cooking - holds its shape, imparts a fragrant aroma to lettuce leaves and slices of duck meat. Another interesting dish is “Skoblyanka” (78 UAH) from three types of meat - veal, pork and chicken, cooked in cream with chanterelles. The meat is complemented by a salad mix - it is placed on poached tomatoes, garnished with roundly cut potatoes and fried until golden brown and physalis berries. For dessert, Petrovsky Brovar bakes a pear pie (56 UAH) in the form of a small round donut filled with caramel with ice cream and a carambola star.

Experiments in Terracotta

The Terracotta restaurant, which recently boiled crayfish in brine and beer according to Russian recipes, nevertheless decided to remain within the framework of its more familiar Mediterranean cuisine. The new menu is mostly European, but there are bright Russian dishes in it. Here, for example, they prepare the hit of the season - Pozharskie cutlets with potato medallions (165 UAH). They are made with onions, but they are sauteed in melted butter and only then added to the minced meat, so they hardly show themselves. In addition, the menu includes “Chaliapin medallions” (295 UAH), that is, veal with Madeira and chanterelle sauce, as well as foie gras with citrus sorbet (225 UAH) and confit duck leg with apple and melon gazpacho (275 UAH) . A curious dish is sterlet stewed in birch sap (265 UAH). The chef embodied the fusion ideas, coming up with such new items as the back of smoked trout with mango-ginger tartare (195 UAH), salmon with Hollandaise sauce and profiteroles stuffed with pike caviar, quail eggs with tobiko caviar on spinach (180 UAH), as well as salmon with Parma ham and shiitake mushrooms (175 UAH).

New items at Touch Cafe

This fall, in the relatively young Touch Cafe of the Carte Blanche chain, guests are invited to entertain themselves with a Stone Grill dish (400 g - 260 UAH). A stand is brought to the table, a stone heated to 350°C is placed on it, on which you need to fry the meat yourself. A very good idea for the company. The meat was selected taking into account different tastes, the seasonings were chosen classic. The formula is simple - red meat is marinated with herbs, white meat is marinated with sesame seeds. Sauces and a plate of raw assorted dishes are placed on the table: milk veal on the bone with rosemary, young beef fillet with sage and chicken fillet with sesame seeds, which can only be fried.

Other autumn dishes include Thai salad with duck, vegetables and peanuts with mango sauce (139 UAH). The duck is marinated in soy sauce with ginger, lime and cane sugar for 24 hours. It is important to use exactly this kind of sugar - then you will get a caramel taste. Carrots, bell peppers and daikon are cut into strips and peanuts, sprouts and mango sauce based on chili pepper and soy sauce are added to them.

Noteworthy is the tear-clear chicken soup with the aroma of sesame oil, udon noodles, shrimp and chicken (78 UAH). The soup, a Chinese-style soup with plenty of ingredients, is served with a spoon and chopsticks to enjoy the broth-soaked vegetables - leeks, garlic, bell peppers, ginger, spinach, nori and shiitake seaweed - as well as pieces of chicken and shrimp.

After the soup, you can order tuna with fennel and apples (159 UAH) or chicken curry with zucchini cubes (500 g - 152 UAH). For the dish, take boneless chicken drumsticks, fry them with garlic, then stew them in chicken broth with curry spices, tomatoes, zucchini, garnish with cilantro and serve directly in the pan.

Pushkin's favorite cutlets