1 Red Square Review

From Moscowiki

1 Red Square

Cuisine: Russian
Address: Red pl., 1, building of the State historical museum
Metro: Okhotny Ryad
Tel: 692-1196 / 51-98 / 5176
E-mail: info@redsquare.ru
Web: www.redsquare.ru
Open from 12:00 until 24:00.
All major credit cards are accepted.

By Polly Dented

I have always been curious about what goes on within 1 Red Square, a fancy-type restaurant hidden deep in the bowels of the Russian Historical Museum on Red Square. I finally got my chance last week when Expat.Ru was invited to check the place out. I had previously heard conflicting comments about the restaurant's cuisine, which is proudly described as traditional aristocratic Russian fare. Nevertheless, at the end of the evening we left quite full and without much to complain about.

The entrance to 1 Red Square is the same entrance for the Historical Museum, where there are usually a couple of men standing outside in ridiculous "traditional" costumes. After passing through the now-ubiquitous metal detectors, we took a left towards the restaurant's hostess. The interior is surprisingly cozy, with low, curved ceilings and plenty of nooks and crannies. We were seated in one said nook, which we shared with just one other table.

And then we were given the menu.

Of course I and my dining partner, who shall henceforth be referred to as Ms X, have long ago become accustomed to Moscow's giant tome-like menus. And both Ms X and I speak and read Russian, so a menu in Russian generally does not present much of an obstacle. Yet due to the nature of 1 Red Square's "theme" so to speak, of what appears to be pre-revolutionary aristocrat grub, the names of menu selections are arcane and confusing, often despite the lengthy description of most dishes. Take, for example, kolduny v bulyon (420Rbs), or what at first glance would appear to be "wizards in broth." Or depending on which dictionary you use, it could alternatively mean "sorcerers" or "magicians" in broth. This was very interesting, particularly as in item on the restaurant's vegetarian menu (yes - 1 Red Square actually has a separate vegetarian menu!). It was a very good thing that we got one menu in English and one in Russian, so we were able to compare notes. As it turns out, kolduny are pelmeni-like mushroom dumplings that hail from the Baltics. We decided we had to try them, and they were amazing, one of the best things we tried all evening.

Now as Ms X is a vegetarian, she stuck to the veggie menu and I tried to order more meaty things. We shared one order of Russian solyena and mochenya (270Rbs), i.e. salted and soaked "preserves" according to the menu. The English description of this plate includes the following tidbit of information: "It is said that empress (sic) Catherine II liked a crunchy salted cucumber with some boiled beef above all dainties of her table." The dish includes pickled cucumbers, those long green onion-like things that are always pickled anyway, pickled garlic, pickled tomatoes, some fresh dill and believe it or not, some slices of a pickled apple. Well color me salty, a pickled apple! This we had to try. I wouldn't say this dish is the daintiest of all the "dainties of the table" but rather your standard plate of pickled stuff, you know, like what you get at birthday parties and all that. Even though I really like most pickled stuff, I do have to say that it is my personal opinion that the pickled apple tasted kind of like an old sweat sock. I mean that's probably what it tastes like, I don't actually have any first-hand sock-tasting experience. Judge for yourself.

To substitute for Cathy II's boiled beef, I decided to try 1 Red Square's roast beef appetizer (480Rbs), which unsurprisingly consists of several slices of cold, rare-ish roast beef. The meat was sort of "blah" none of the bursting flavor beef-o-rama that I had for some reason expected. Maybe I tried the roast beef too soon after eating that slice of socky apple. Maybe it's just because personally I like meat to be a little closer to well done. I don't know, but suffice it to say that the roast beef was just "OK". I should also note that we were served fresh horseradish sauce and mustard with the pickled stuff and the roast beef. I'm not a big fan of horseradish, but I tried it and it cleared my sinuses. Ms X, on the other hand, knows her horseradish and said it was *really* good, possibly the Mother of All Horseradishes. I tried the mustard after the horseradish and maybe that's why it tasted kind of like the horseradish.

Since traditional Russian cuisine is known for its wonderful soups, we decided we were obliged to try some soup. Ms X went with the vegetarian borsch (180Rbs - and I refuse to spell this word with a "t" at the end) made with baked beets. I decided to try a variation of rassolnik, a soup made using pickle brine. This particular variation is made with chicken stock and is called kalya (270Rbs), which is suspiciously close to kalian, the Russian word for bong or hookah. Despite the name and despite the odd coincidence that so many plates are priced at 420Rbs, it tasted absolutely nothing like bong water, which I have also not tried. It was less flavorful than I had expected, but good nevertheless. Ms X was wholly satisfied with her vegetarian borsch, which one must admit is pretty darned hard to find in Moscow.

Now would be a good time to mention how deceptively small the portions seem at 1 Red Square. The portions look small, but if you eat them, you will get full - fast! I could barely finish my soup and I had this whole pot of what was called "ear stew" (ushnoye) (420Rbs) on the way. Damn. And Ms X still had to deal with a basket of asparagus and some sort of sauce that is listed as "mousseline" (420Rbs). So then we were served our main entrees, which mostly I just looked at wistfully because I was so stuffed already. My ushnoye was a little pot filled with stew with pork and veggies in an orange-colored sauce that really kicked ass. The sauce was really, really good and made the veggies super tasty and the so-so pork more "OK". Ms X's basket was actually a basket made out of some pastry something-or-other and it was indeed filled with white asparagus. Ms X said the dish was sort of bland, but then said there's not much else you can do to dress up asparagus.

I spent a lot of time looking at that little pot before we mustered the strength to look at the dessert menu. The dessert menu has some more recognizable items to choose from, including cherry vareniki, ice cream and something called "fluffy cake." There are also some very strange items on the dessert menu, like "quiver fruit soup" something called "Nesselrode pudding" (described as "impressive pudding") and rye bread sorbet (240Rbs). Holy jockey shorts, batman! Did you say rye bread sorbet?! Yes indeed. Sorbet made out of rye bread. You have probably already guessed that this is the one we decided to try. I do not know exactly what to say about the rye bread sorbet except that it is unlike anything I have ever tried before, which naturally does not include old sweat socks or bong water. Ms X said that it was sort of like frozen kvas, but I dunno. I don't really like kvas so much, but I can't actually say that I didn't like the rye bread sorbet. I'm not sure if I liked it or not. It confused me.

Now let's take care of some of those pesky other details. Music, for one. Throughout the evening, a mandolin-guitar duo would occasionally emerge in shiny "traditional" Russian costumes to serenade the diners. They played several traditional Russian folk songs, one psuedo-Italian song twice (that song that's played on carousels, I think), and one mandolin-guitar instrumental rendition of "I'm Your Venus," which totally caught me off guard. The mandolin player was really getting into it, though. She nearly broke out into a solo. In between the live music sets, we were subjected to recorded pop-versions of Russian folk songs that seemed to repeat throughout the evening and nearly made me start twitching. Nevertheless, the music volume is far from overwhelming and is easy to tune out.

As far as the service is concerned, the wait staff is almost painfully polite and I am afraid to say that yes, they "hover." They only have your best interests in mind, really, but it was sort of unnerving to have our waitress just feet away peeking out from behind a corner almost all evening. Plus they offer to "ukhazhivat za Vami" all the time, which means they put all your food on your plate for you. I'm sure some people are really into the whole power trip of having the waitress ukhazhivat after them, but I felt kind of uncomfortable. Like maybe next she was gonna wave a pickle around and say "Oooopen wiiiiide! Heeeeere comes the airplane!!!"

Ms X would like me to say that she was surprised and impressed by the selection for vegetarians, an effort not often made by Moscow restaurants. Our waitress had obviously been schooled not just in the way of the vegetarian, but also in the Vegan Code, and was careful about asking if Ms X could eat cream sauces, etc. The only thing Ms X would like to point out is that the items listed as entrees on the vegetarian menu are not deceptively small, they are just plain small, i.e. not entree-sized. But otherwise she gives her vegetarian comrades the green light of approval.

Also, so far I forgot to mention drinks. There is a really, really long drink menu that probably has a pretty extensive wine list. We saw lots of French wines on it. We drank stary melnik, which is only served from 0.33L bottles.

And for the final pesky detail: the crowd. There wasn't any. There was Ms X and I, some other foreigner who sat at the table in our nook, and across the hall there was a group of Asian businessmen who were drinking vodka ever-so-quietly and politely with their dinner. A couple of them got a wild look in their eyes when the live music duo played "I'm Your Venus." In other words, it was kind of not very busy at all. And there weren't any Russians. That's the thing I don't get about this place: it supposedly has a niche - old-fashioned, traditional, aristocratic, Russian. But there are no Russians, just a few foreigners. Why? Probably because most dishes cost at least 420Rbs and homey don't pay that for local fare. Nevertheless, if you can snake some visiting friend or relative (especially a visiting vegetarian) into taking you out, give 1 Red Square a try.

11.10.04.