You Cafe Review
From Moscowiki
| You Cafe |
Cuisine: Club food
Address: Pushechnaya ul., 4
Tel: 8 499 2718865, 621-4907
E-mail: youcafe@yandex.ru
Web: www.youcafe.ru
Open from 11:00 until last guest.
There are too many hookahs in this town!
By Jason Creed
I have a few things to say about this new place Yo located down the street from Kuznetskiy Most a stone's throw across from Karma Bar on Pushechnaya Ulitsa, but first things first – there are too many damn hookahs in this town! It seems like at any eating and drinking establishment I walk into this summer in Moscow I immediately see hookahs at the bar, hookahs at the tables, and menus with a full page devoted to hookahs. I am waiting for McDonald's in Moscow to soon offer the McHookah. The years of ubiquitous cheap putevki to Turkey and Egypt are finally taking a toll on the cafe character of this town...
And this leads me to my first impression of Cafe - (yeah, like “you” – clever, eh?). A lot of self-fashioned hipster places in Moscow try to be too many things for too many people, often with mixed results. However, I should first say that I do like - (and perhaps you too, although you haven't bought me dinner yet), not because of the standard review comp, but because they have a decent chef with a good menu and the young staff seem to really be trying hard to get this joint off the ground. The restaurant / nightclub opened four-months ago and at first glance from the outside reminded me of one of my favorite streetside eating spots in Chicago, with a modern urban look, a few cafe tables outside, and aproned wait staff going to and fro, and a sharp looking crowd. Inside there are two levels with four main areas, a bar upfront by the door, two dining halls up top (one that can serve parties of 12-15, a small dining area down stairs, a dancefloor in the back where they have DJ's on certain nights, and – per my rant above – a small hookah bar. Damn hookahs.
I won't go into details about how they did not have our reservation (so precious few places in this town keep an actual reservation list), sat us down after waiting fifteen minutes, then being told by another waiter that we couldn't sit where we were seated, and how we waited another twenty minutes for menus, etc. – I think this says enough. And I also do not want to go on about how we waited another thirty minutes for drinks and I swear another forty minutes for our appetizers except for one thing – that guy in the cow costume we saw out the window walking up and down the street advertising the Russian fast-food buffet Mu-Mu located around the corner appeared as a siren of culinary bliss by the time we were actually served. I will just go into the menu and a description of our fairly good meal.
My Irish-Russian companion’s input to this review might be a little biased as she is still tickled that the waiter thought she was Kseniya Sobchak (is that really a compliment?), but that might balance out the fact that I am rather a food snob having put myself through college working at a Michelin rated restaurant. I will say that the menu selection is good, and amazingly well priced relative to similar places. The appetizers ranged RUR 150-270 and aside from some standard staples of carpaccio, cheese plate, etc. had some creative concoctions. Despite the tempting list of salads (RUR 140-280) including shrimp and avocado with rucola (RUR 280), chicken ceasar (RUR 210), and tuna (RUR 150) as well as soup selection (RUR 90-180) including the summer favorite gazpacho, we opted to start with two appetizers - buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes and basil (RUR 210) that was outstandingly fresh with excellent mozzarella that had the right firmness yet soft texture, and took a chance on the os’minozhki zamochili svoi nozhki (roughly translated as “baby squids with wet legs” – RUR 320) which, oddly enough, was served only after the meal.
Which raises another issue – when is calamari not calamari? We had ample time for this discussion while waiting for our food sipping on two rounds of drinks (Chilean chardonnay RUR 140, mojito RUR 180 complete with naked-lady plastic swizzle stick.) Oddly the second round of drinks came in different size glasses – the wine got smaller, and the mojito got bigger – although the second time around apparently mixed with still water rather than club soda as it was quite, well, flat. Even though we had yet to see our second appetizer, my dinner companion vehemently protested my reference to it as calamari. In my cookbook, calamari is cooked (fried, grilled, sauteed, etc.) squid. She insisted that calamari is not squid, but a related species that is often mistakenly referred to as squid. Not letting this argument go, I even Googled it at home – and the first hit I get is a Wikipedia link to – I shat you not – the amphibious species “Mon Calamari” known for their role with the rebel alliance in the Star Wars movies. Remember Admiral Ackbar who lead the attack on the Death Star? Well, he was one tough calamari. I was distracted by the other Star Wars links of off Wikipedia, so the argument remains unresolved.
Anyway, for main courses my aspiring marine biologist companion ordered the saffron risotto with zucchini (RUR 270) that was served in a very tasty fried cheese basket, which was perhaps the best part in her opinion. I skipped over an assortment of meat dishes including Australian steak (RUR 480) and chicken cutlets (RUR 190) and focused on the fish menu that included dorado (RUR 460), tuna steak (RUR 470), and steamed salmon (RUR 330). I settled on the latter with rosemary potatoes (RUR 60). I had to wait a while for my salmon, so I spent the time nibbling on my beautiful cephalopodologist’s risotto much to her dismay. Once it arrived, the salmon was in fact excellent and perhaps even well worth the wait – and worth the risotto.
At nearly an hour-and-a-half after ordering it, we finally were able to feast our eyes on the os’minozhki zamochili svoi nozhki – visually looking like Admiral Ackbar’s offspring swimming in a soupy tomato mix with jalapenos. Despite the disturbing appearance (I swear, on retrospect they really did look like Admiral Ackbar’s head with tiny legs), they were tasty with a balanced spiciness. With the lingering heat of jalapenos in our mouths, we decided to cool down with a creamy cheese cake (RUR 150) that – kudos to the chef – actually resembled true-to form cheesecake in a city of tvorog cake wannabes.
Friends often accuse me of being the slowest eater they know, and indeed if you are a slow eater this is a good spot to dine. Some things are worth waiting for, but much of that depends what you do while you the wait. From the time we arrived the restaurant transformed from family dining (the booth next to us was family with little girl reading skazki) to a mixed-personality night club (the same booth later filled with a group of Russians discussing their evening plans to go to Diagelev). All in all we enjoyed our visit and the people watching that came with it. The food was good, albeit out of order, and the service very friendly, albeit very slow. I’ll give a chance – we liked it, and we might just return on our dime – but ? needs a little more time to work out the kinks and figure out what it wants to be. Last piece of advice, ask for a map to the bathroom before you go.
06.08.07.
