Russian Café Culture

How to get away with sitting in a café for 3 hours: buy a 500ml cappuccino, and sip every few minutes.

I honestly don't know how, but I ended up being served a half a litre of coffee in Mickey and Monkeys. I mean, I'm not complaining, but it's more than enough to make me NOT want to drink any more for the rest of the week. Quel horreur.

Café and restaurant culture in Russia is surprisingly good, considering that it relatively recently crawled out of a bad economic situation and especially since Russians love their traditional food. I was definitely not expecting décor that could pass for an instagram post and food that matched. I'm used to the standard borscht, pelmeni and olivye.

Plus, everything is crazy affordable. The average price of a coffee is $3AUD; a full meal and drink at a really good restaurant max $12.

With all this in mind, we found ourselves eating out almost every day on exchange - super delicious, but not so great on the waistline eeeeek. Also side note: there is a ton of European cafes - Belgian, French, English, Irish pubs whatever you want - name it and you can find it.

This list of cafes and restaurants in St Petersburg and Moscow are just some of the finds that we dined at. A lot of places are chains and franchises, which is why they’re super reliable places and we just kept coming back to them I guess.

St Petersburg

Mickey and Monkeys

One of the artsiest places in St Petersburg, it’s a restaurant/café during the day and bar by night. With super eclectic dishes and monster shakes (plus 500ml coffees), I highly recommend this place.

Loft Projekt Etagi

Another really amazing find, this old bread factory was transformed into an indie space that houses a host of small shops and street food vendors. This unassuming building really comes to life at night, when the fairy lights are sparkling and people trickle in and out.

Since we found out about it in the winter months, we weren't able to take advantage of the terrace on the fifth floor which is connected to the cafés there, but inside it's very quiet and peaceful: a great place to study. There's also a super cute jewellery store, an even cuter k-pop goodies store and the cutest little bookshop.

The bottom floor of Loft is always bustling. Although it's looks border on dodgy and cheap, it's actually a hidden gem with the best food. Especially the Korean street food place we found. And of course, we went back multiple times when we could be bothered to brave the walk in the cold for THE best bibimbap.

It's just so authentic. In Russia it's so rare to find Asian food that's actually tasty, and done right (please don't even try the sushi, it's not worth the disappointment) so this place was heaven-sent.

Biblioteka

With 99% conviction, I say that this is my favourite place in all of St P.

The best food at the most affordable prices, beautiful setting andddd it's right on Nevsky Prospect. If you don't know what Nevsky prospect is get outta here.

This restaurant offers a 'gastronomic culinary experience' or something along those lines, which means they serve traditional Russian food but with a twist. Think borscht with a grilled cheese flake and vinigrette salad with something exotic like prawns. AMAZING!

The best sea buckthorn tea EVER, and the most delicious desserts. Ugh TAKE. ME. BACK.

Koreana Light

AHHHHH THIS PLACE IS THE BEST. A two-minute walk from when we stayed in our city apartment, this was the regular place for food and sometimes study (again with food). My gosh I really miss it.

This place has a variety of Korean food, and the thing is it's a fast food place, but actually kind of healthy and super delicious.

Rumochnaya / Vodka Museum

I'm so sad that I couldn't drag any of my friends to this crazy place. I ended up re-visiting it with my family and parents' work friends for dinner when they came over.

If you want a fun, authentic, vodka-tasting and actual Russian experience GO TO THIS PLACE. Everything on the menu is delicious, comes in hardy portions and is AUTHENTIC, just the right amount of touristy.

It's so atmospheric I absolutely love it. There's either gypsy (tsiganie) or Russian national music playing in the background; waiters are dressed in tunics and aprons and carry around jugs of fruit juice (mors) or flavoured vodka (nastoika).

I'm getting passionate about it BUT that's how good it is.

Mamma Roma

The best pizza and pasta ever.

We ended up going to this place so many times, because it was the best food right next to the Master building at the city campus. On the corner of the street, it was the first restaurant I visited with my dad when I got to St P, and it saw all of us GSOM exchangers super hungry after long classes.

Marketplace

Really reminds me of Vapianos, but with more variety than just pasta.

There are different stations, so for example, there's wok, roast, pasta, salads, desserts, and a huge bar. Some things you have to order and tap the card you're issued with, and other stations you just pick up and eat.

It's like a buffet but much classier.

We went here on a number of occasions, and especially to study - that one time we kept ordering lemonades and coffees to get us through a horrible marketing project.

Coffeeshop Company

Out of all the cafes and restaurants, this place has coffee you can trust.

They have a really good selection of drinks, frappuccinos, coffees, mochas and hot chocolates. Very very nice.

I really love this one croissant they have with cheese, but that's about it on the food side.

Tokyo city

I don’t think I can count the amount of times we've been to Tokyo City. Yeah, I really shouldn't. It was always the place for a class group outing for food after class, or when we were working on pressing group assignments.

We were all very sceptical on the first day we were lead to it by a Russian exchange buddy, to find that on the first day of classes every student's families were celebrating there. But after that first day, we were hooked. And it's just so x 1000000 much better than eating at the campus cafeteria (ewww).

There are two on either side of the bachelor campus, so whether you were heading home to the dorms, or to the city, there's a Tokyo city on the way for you.

The best things about this chain franchise are the drinks (delicious), pizza selection (awesome and amazing) and drum roll please… the lunch menu. Choose three dishes and it's $6. What the heck. Add a nice drink and it's $8 thank you very much.

Vaffel

This waffle place gets an honourable mention because they make a good chai latte, and satisfactory waffles (but of course, not anywhere close to Belgian standards as I was told). Also, the people that work there are super nice. I was having a quick lonely dinner in the city one day, before heading back to the dorms, and the guy working there just started talking to me, asking where I was from. He could not get over the fact that I willingly decided to come to Russia, from Australia.

He was actually baffled. Then, when he just could not understand my decision to study here, I was like k bye see ya. Ahh good times.

Vlavashe

This is the real MVP of this list, to be honest.

We found this place after walking past it a million times to and from the dorms to the bus stop. It’s a tiny shop right next to the railway. So close, that when a train drives by, it rattles.

But yes, a great lifesaver when you're bored to death in the dorms and don’t want to eat another bowl of pasta or rice with canned veggies.

Get yourself a shawarma with some friends and life is good again.

Starbucks

I don't know what it is, but whenever I'm travelling outside of Australia, I am completely drawn to Starbucks.

Although I don’t drink it here, ever, it reminds me of the coffee culture of my Western home.

I'm not sure.

I mean, the coffee actually is pretty good. Although the prices are exactly the same (and even higher thanks to the exchange rate), it's pretty good coffee (compared to every other Russian establishment) and it's super reliable.

Moscow and other honourable mentions

GUM

I've been to the buffet (stolovaya) on the third level and honestly, I had no idea you could go up the levels!

Let alone to find food up there aha).

It's where the food is good and the views of the shopping mall are even better.

GUM is truly one of my favourite places in Moscow. Sure it’s a tourist trap, but it's so beautiful and they play soviet tunes on the loudspeakers, and have seasonal displays, and have people selling ice creams and drinks all year round. PLUS not to mention the fact designer shops everywhere.

It's a cute, lil, dreamy heaven.

Schokoladnitsa

Let me be honest, this place totally is not the best. The tiniest food portions - have you ever seen carbonara pasta served in a teacup before???

The drinks are a little better, and the desserts are pretty good. But that's all I give them credit for.

Expectations vs Reality

Phxali Hinkali aka 'a guaranteed good time'

OOOOOOOF delicious. Hinkali are a Georgian style, huge dumpling with filling and soup/sauce inside.

I had so much trouble eating them for the first time and not looking like an idiot. Eating these definitely involves a learning curve.

Order the fillings with cheese ones, beef ones, and the pizza-looking thing (lepeshka) with melted cheese on it. Mmmmmmm.

Ant looking gr8

Varenichnaya

So vareniki are like dumplings, but different.

So good. If you order a platter of different flavours, they come with sweet and savoury options. One morning we were super hungry before seeing a Bolshoi ballet performance, we zipped in here, had ourselves a huge breakfast and ran off to the theatre.

Mind you, there's no way you'll exit this place without a food baby. It's delish.

The English Bakeries

Many a pastry and coffee was had here, for dessert or just a little pick me up. The almond croissant almost transports you to Paris.

Chaihona

Finally, just choose any chaihona and you will find the most reasonable prices for absolutely delicious georgian food. They really know what's good. I'm serious I love me a good chaihona.

This is where the list of food and memories ends! If you're visiting Russia, check these handy places out and you won't be disappointed!