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The shell concealing a pearl looks ordinary and unpretentious; you will never suspect there is such a miracle inside. For the Nikolay (Nicholas) Restaurant, such a bowl is the House of Architects, a familiar to every Petersburger building on Bolshaya Morskaya Street that used to belong to A.A.Polovtsev before the Revolution. It is amazing, how this mansion whose magnificence takes the breath away, managed to survive through the restless Russian history. When you get there, it is so easy to become an eternal captive of those amazingly beautiful and exquisite halls, over which the Time seems to have no power any longer. There is no annoying shine and haughty luxury, sometimes typical of some newly restored masterpieces of the past. The spirit of this mansion owner still protects his property, sometimes being the keepers of the halls or, maybe, observing tours arranged for the visitors by the Nikolay Restaurant.
Reproducing this magnificence in metaphors and bulky epithets is really impossible and senseless – you have to come here! All we can do is to give a brief actual inventory or a laconic guidebook on the miracle.
First comes the main hall of the restaurant - the Walnut Drawing Room: hand-worked walnut panels and Moorish leather Gobelin tapestries of late 16th early 17th centuries amazing with its authentic antiquity and skilful execution, sound furniture, strict white cloths, and dark-green tops. The other halls are for banquets, and are rented separately. The White Hall – marble of different colors and tones, and tremendous stucco molding. The Oak Hall – library with working Italian fireplace trimmed with marble and topped with bronze sculptures in antique style. The Conference Hall – a hall for receptions – everything is amazing here: doors made of 120 wood sorts with fragments of tortoise armor, fastened with silver hinges (a legend has it, that Lenin was offered a steam locomotive for just one door leaf!), 40 versions of marble used in the hall decoration, skillfully trimmed balcony for real flowers and musicians. The music is still played here now: piano on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and live guitar and old Russian romances on Fridays and Saturdays.
It is difficult to come back to more earthy things after all this magic and begin a conversation on the restaurant cuisine. Fortunately, the cuisine is remarkable, its quality and refinement being in line with the high spirit of the place. Offered here are dishes of European and Russian cuisines traditional in its ingredients and execution, as it should be in such a restaurant. Speciality dish "The Flower of Saint Petersburg" - salmon fillet and pikeperch fillet with eggplants, black caviar and vegetables in pastry; Salmon in most tender cream caviar sauce, with blackberries and tinned vegetables; Onion Soup under traditional French recipe; Duck Fillet with apples; amazing Strudel where transparent pastry layers are alternated with layers of apples, almond, raisin, cinnamon and sugar crumb. Grandiose banquet dishes: Pig stuffed with chicken fillet, pistachios, ham and spices; Young Pork stuffed with veal, beef, beef tongue, corn and spices; Pikeperch stuffed with salmon and served "in canes".
After you try these and other dishes, you will be convinced, that the best traditions of Russian and European cuisines are embodied in the menu of the Nikolay Restaurant.
The Nikolay Restaurant is not a part of the history, but the history itself, alive and actual, as never before.