Short Takes
Text Charles Borden
Correa’s on Gasheka
Isaac Correa has returned to Gasheka, to the space vacated by Uley, brightening up the interior with light wood trim and unveiling the windows to bring in light from the street. With comfort food like his Philly cheese steak sandwich (350r), or the spicy sausage, roasted pepper, chili, mozzarella and oregano pizza (300r), Correa’s is packed at lunchtime with staff and managers from the Ducat office complexes. The salads, appetizers and entrees change regularly. Correa’s is a bright, comfortable place for an informal business meeting. It offers take-out and catering, and features luscious desserts, good service and reasonably priced, Correa private label, red and white table wines.
Old Havana
An amazing place, open for two years now with a stunning tableside Brazilian show nightly from Thursday to Saturday – the costumes, choreography, music, Capoeira martial arts dancers. Frankly, we’ve never seen anything like it. To top it off there’s a late night disco, Cuban cigar roller and Salsa dance lessons. With all that going on, it easy to ignore dinner, but Old Havana has the Cuban cuisine down also. Try an appetizer of Càmarones de Ñienfuegos (970r), tiger shrimp crusted with almonds and saffron with sweet and sour sauce, Crema de Camarones (300r), cream soup with tiger prawns and wine, and Steak Amazonia (1250r), grilled marbled Angus steak with salsa sauce.
Beavers
If you’re out in Marino for some of the great fashion deals at Passport publisher John Ortega’s Fashion Mart, step around the corner to Robert Greco’s Beaver’s, a barbeque sports bar and grill. Beavers has some great American-style burgers, pizza, nachos, wings and desserts, made with many of Greco’s hometown recipes. Try his mom’s Antipasto (210r), the Olympic Pizza (430r) that weighs in at more than a kilo, the Big Cheeseburger (230r), and a huge portion of Apple Crisp (150r) just like grandma made it. The place fills up fast on the weekends with locals, so it is a good place to try out your Russian language skills. It may be way out of the center but worth the trip.
Coffee Bean on Leningradsky Prospekt
Coffee Bean has a new location serving some of the best coffee in town – on the right side as you head out towards the airport. For those who are confused by the proliferation of coffee places in Moscow, most are actually just small restaurants with table service and full menu. Owner Jerry Ruditser brought Coffee Bean and the US coffee shop footprint to Russia years ago, before anyone had heard the S-word – good coffees and teas, counter service, light snacks, nosmoking and homley comfort.
Passport Magazine’s Wine and Dining Editor, Charles Borden, has authored a new book as a companion to the website RestaurantVote.Com. This 192-page pocket guide, RestaurantVote Best World Restaurants, is a concise list of the top 1,000 restaurants in the principal 100 business travel cities around the world. The RestaurantVote guide was written as a companion to the website RestaurantVote.Com, which now provides users the ability to rate over 640,000 restaurants in over 30,000 cities in 111 countries with a simple five point rating system. To mark the release of this new guide, Passport readers will receive a free copy of the book by applying at info@restaurantvote.com - just note this offer is from Passport in your email.
The book is available for purchase in the U.S. on Amazon.
|
|