Welcome to Russian's Second Capital City - St. Petersburg!

We offer to repeat our path and meet with your favorite lady in St. Pertersburg!
     We stayed at the Hotel St.Petersburg which stands in the middle of historical center of the city. From there you can easily get to Hermitage, Russian Museum, Issakievskiy Sobor or take a walk to Peter's Krepost and Summer's Sarden. From the window of your hotel room you will see the famous Cruiser Aurorah and wonderful panorama of the city,which is equally beautiful during the summer and winter. But especially our city is beautiful during the period of White Nights.
     St. Petersburg is exceptionally beautiful city with rich history and many historic places which necessary to visit! Definately go to Hermitage!

There are many exciting places in St. Petersburg where you can have a good time. Robert was mostly interested in Russian Cuisine. Perhaps among my clients there are also plenty lovers of good food like my husband. That is why I make excursions to St. Petersburg Restaurants.
     Today, Russia's second capital is awash in martinis and lights, as the new rich indulge in ostrich capriccio at resurrect - the - Romanovs - style haunts. For a city whose culinary culture was ravaged by 70 years of shortages, the foods cape is more then respectable. Still, uncovering outstanding restaurants in St. Petersburg ("Piter" to Russian) can be daunting. Russian dinners as memorable as the Matisses at the Hermitage (don't miss the third Floor) and Lunches as bracing as a morning stroll through the imperial parks of Pavlovsk and Peterhoff. The vodka is iced, the caviar glistens. Just skip the snails.

ALA RUSSE FOOD IN RUSSIA

Gorchakov's. The restaurant, which occupies the former mansion of Prince Gorchakov, a Czarist statesman and a classmate of Pushkin's, is divided into a series of themed rooms: one re-creates a provincial town square, another a Ukrainian village backyard.
     It's the sort of setting that calls for a shot of vodka and many plates of zakuski (Russian tapas) : smoked fish (herring, sturgeon) and wild mushrooms (marinated, brined, or saut?ed with sour cream), plus unexpectedly cosmopolitan daily specials like smoked reindeer with mango. The chef's airy beef and , cabbage pirozhki prove that yeast dough is a point of Slavic pride. Gorchakov's also has an encyclopedic roster of blini and dumplings (grab the sour cherry vareniki) and utterly wonderful soups, including a definitive Ukrainian borscht: hot, meaty, and properly crimson. Russian entrees never compare to the appetizers and soups, so I passed on the country sausage and the slow-baked pork ribs.
     19 Bolshaya Monetnaya Ulitsa; dinner for two $50.

Podvorye, near the country palace of Pavlovsk a half-hour drive south of town, feels less like a restaurant than an ethnographic museum-down to an exterior modeled on a Russian log cabin, the stuffed bear by the entrance, and the waiters' folkloric garb. Inside, there is enough lumber to forest tree-less Iceland.
     Owned by Sergei Gutsait, a self-made tycoon, the place conjures up a Slavophilic that's a raw egg). vision of a self-sufficient agricultural paradise that's nothing short of Tolstoyan.
     The fresh juices (mulberry, cornelian cherry) are made from fruit grown on Gutsait's Crimean estate. The list of infused vodkas reads like an ancient folk poem: birch bud, cowberry leaf. The house-made jams and herbal teas take up pages. A paean to the northern countryside, the cooking revolves around dacha fare: meaty porcini gently pickled with black-currant leaves, robust potato pancakes with pork cracklings, rich sturgeon solianka soup zapped with olives and pickles, and the kind of stewed duck with sauerkraut I thought had disappeared with, well, Tolstoy. Enough to make any Russian feel warm and fuzzy.
     16 Filtrovskoye Shosse, Pavlovsk; lunch for two $45.

THE SPICE IS RIGHT

Back in the days of the U.S.S.R. , without access to travel or foreign cuisines, Russians turned to the Soviet Union's exotic fringes for complex, spicy food. Though the empire is no more, their affection for the cuisines of the Caucasus and Central Asia remains. With its lavish use of seasonings and a vast selection of tart fruit and nut-based sauces, Georgian was Russia's defacto haute cuisine. Head to the modest Cafe Salkhino to taste the marvelous pkhali, or vegetable-and-walnut pates (eggplant, roasted pepper) scented with khmeli-suneli, Georgia's signature coriander-based spice blend. Pounded walnuts also enrich garlicky satsivi spooned over poached chicken. And don't pass up the khachapuri, or Georgia's answer to pizza. The best rendition is the boat-shaped open pie from the Adzharia region, near the Black Sea, with a bubbling center of mozzarella-like suJuguni cheese into which the waitress stirs a raw egg and a pat of butter. Pure cholesterol, pure joy.
     25 Kronverksky Prospekt; lunch for two S40.

All the strands of ex-Soviet ethnic food anthropology come together at Caravan, a cavernous Central Asianthemed restaurant by the Fontanka River. The reclining stuffed camel, the faux mosaics-it's all a bit Disneylandish. Yet as I watched young couples reverentially polish off their pilafs with chickpeas, I knew that this was one of " the rare places in town where well-off natives come to eat, not just to exchange boasts about their latest Mersik (a pet name for a Mercedes) in the sonic blitz of a deafening band. With a brigade of Azerbaijani, Armenian. and Uzbek cooks presiding over the kitchen, the menu whisks you from Baku to Yerevan to Tashkent. The Azerbaijani soups brim with lamb, chestnuts, and yellow peas; the kebabs are succulent. But r d be just as happy eating my way through the dumplings and pies, from chebureki ( calzone-shaped Crimean fried meat pies) , to chuchvara (Uzbek ravioli with spinach and yogurt sauce). Let the Rolex-toting swells swagger over defrosted hamachi at Sakura (the "in" Japanese spot in town). They don't know what they're missing.
     4-6 Voznesensky Prospekt; dinner for two $60.

HOTEL DINING: PUTIN ON THE RITZ

Unlike brash, populist Moscow, St. Petersburg retains an almost obsessive attachment to haute culture (when was the last time you heard tattooed youth argue about Tchaikovsky in a coffee bar?). Fittingly, the Grand Hotel Europe - across the street from the Philharmonic and just off from Nevsky Prospekt, the city's main thoroughfare-works tirelessly to nurture it's role as a premier cultural symbol. It's restaurant is the setting for a variety of musical evening; at breakfast you can refuel on selyodka (herring) while being serenaded by a world-class guitarist or harpist.
     A tasting flight of caviar and vodkas is de rigueur at the hotel's snug and moody Caviar Bar. You can also order the degustation in the lofty L'Europe restaurant, surrounded by Art Nouveau stained glass and warm wood etched with period motifs. The kitchen excels in traditional warhorses, turning out remarkably light chicken Kiev, fine stroganoff made with Black Angus beef, and shchi (cabbage soup) so rich and refined you'd never guess it was an iconic proletarian potage. I watched a fresh-faced server adorn a cheesecake with intricate black-currant swirls. He labored with the breathless Concentration of a Faberge craftsman, then confessed: "I adore this work."
     1-7 Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa; dinner for two $100.

     Recently taken over and refurbished by the Rocco Forte Group, the Hotel Astoria speaks to style-seeking urbanites who frequent Forte's de Russie in Rome or Savoy in Florence. Its mint green tea salon is a great place to get caught in a snowstorm, sipping strong chai from the blue Lomonosov china. If Davidov's restaurant reminds you of Gordon Ram say's dining room at Claridge's in London, it is because it was also designed by David Collins, Britain's answer to AdamTihany. At Davidov's, Collins fused Piter's signature yellow and white Neoclassicism with clubby lighting and leather banquettes, to fabulously romantic effect. At night, waiters in chic Slavic tunics ply the city elite with pelmeni (Siberian dumplings), offered here with some half-dozen fillings, from crab to lamb. Much of the menu lacks sparks, but the crisp pan-fried Georgian chicken and the ukha (clear salmon soup) served with rasstegai (fish-filled pastries) live up to the setting. This is, hands-down, St. Petersburg's most glamorous restaurant.
     39 Bolshaya Morskaya Uli tsa; dinner for two $105.

If you are interested in this tour, email us at svetlana@svetlanas.com