One of the best lunch-places in Moscow is the Slaviansky Bazaar in Nikolski Street, Kitaigorod, situated in the city or business centre of Moscow. It is a mid-day resort of the business men and travellers staying at the hotel, but is more or less deserted afterwards. It has a spacious and lofty restaurant hall and takes in the Times and English illustrated papers. It was formerly noted for its regular English table for members of the colony, who, however, subsequently deserted it to some extent for the three main restaurants.
Here luncheons can be had with excellent choice à la carte. Dinners cost from 1 rouble 25 kopeks.
In addition to these regular restaurants there are several summer garden resorts of a gayer character with cafés, theatres, open-air stages, and various café-chantant amusements. These resorts are at their gayest in the early hours of the morning, till 4 A.M., when the company becomes somewhat varied, and as the guide-books sagely remark, "Gentlemen had better leave their ladies at the hotel."
These places are prettily laid out, and in the afternoon and early part of the evening serve to pass a pleasant hour or two in the summer. Dress clothes are not generally worn when visiting them.
In the town the two best ones are the Aquarium and the Ermitage Sad (Sad is Russian for garden), not the same as the Ermitage Restaurant above mentioned. Admission to gardens, 50 kopeks.
The Yar and the Strelna are favourite restaurant late-evening resorts near the Petrovski Park, a short drive out. The Yar is open in the summer and winter, but the Strelna in the winter only.
St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg has nominally three first-class restaurants, viz., the Bear (L'Ours) on the Bolschaya Kononschaya; the Restaurant de Paris, known as Cubat's, on the Bolschaya Marskaya; and Donon's on the Moika Canal. All of them are good. Donon's has an excellent cellar and supplies a good dinner if ordered in advance. The price of the set meals is very reasonable, about 2 roubles or 4s. 4d. per head; but the profits are made on the wines, which are ridiculously expensive (owing to the enormous duties). For instance, a bottle of vin ordinaire costs 4 roubles 50 kopeks, or 9s. 8d., and no bottle of dry champagne can be had for less than 10 roubles or 21s. 8d.; a whisky and soda is charged 1 rouble 50 kopeks, and in some places 2 roubles; a half bottle of wine is always charged 50 kopeks more than the actual half bottle price.
The Hôtel de France has a luncheon at 75 kopeks, or 1s. 6d., which is very popular with the business community of St. Petersburg, and it is crowded from 12.30 to 2 o'clock. The food is not high class but of a good bourgeois description, and the place is kept by a Belgian named Renault. It is one of the best hotels in St. Petersburg, and its situation is suited to the purpose; but, as a matter of fact, there is absolutely no first-class hotel either in St. Petersburg or Moscow, and sanitation is a factor that has not yet penetrated into the Russian intellect. A man who eats oysters in Russia, eats his own damnation, and at a high price in both senses; they are both costly and poisonous in a town where typhoid is easily contracted.
In the summer there are two good restaurants on the islands, a few miles from St. Petersburg, a sort of Richmond to St. Petersburg,—Felicien's, a dependence of Cubat's; and Ernest's, a branch of the Café de l'Ours, and managed by a brother of the proprietor. Both these have an excellent cuisine and cellar, but the charges, especially at Felicien's, are fairly extravagant. Bands of music and pretty gardens are features of these restaurants, and Felicien's has a terrace on the river opposite the Emperor's summer palace on the Island of Iliargin. They are both practically closed during the winter, excepting by arrangement or when sleighing parties make a rendezvous there.