This is the most proper way to spend 2,000 rubles at Patricks, as I believe.

There’s no menu, you find yourself not in a restaurant, but in a manually gleaned space.

You have to take your shoes off, pay 2,000 rubles and get a set:

A drink made of cilantro, mint, cucumber, black pepper; a soup of almond milk and lentils, a curry set, and a dessert.

By the way, there’s also no receipt, they simply give you your change.

Clearly, the design is the owners’ dream come true: everything’s brought from India, up to old wooden green shelves and travelling bags where they store rice, “right after the trip”.

It’s very warm inside, almost hot; flavors and light make you want to fall asleep.

No marketing, no business component.

Hitting here, you can take a break from the word “establishment”.

Do enjoy.

Paris, even being nothing but a continuous gastro-disappointment and tourist whorehouse, I’m sure, it holds some decent places. After all, it can’t be that those hundreds of thousands of well-dressed people, living in incredibly beautiful houses, would also devour “just that thing with potatoes” (c).

Walking around the center, you might think they do. However, there’s a nuance.

This is a very Paris café, exactly like you’ve imagined it before all the horror happened to the myth-city: a narrow pencil case at Saint-Germain boulevard, three steps away from the tourist HELL, stuffed to the gills with locals and some stray tourists, who are hot and whom the waiter asks in his broken English: “calm down”™:

‘You have some rush? Plane? Train? No? Have a drink now, and sit down.’

And then the extremely simple thing begins: 6 (or 8? – I actually don’t eat them) varieties of oysters, shells/shrimps, huge snails™, it is they – half-palm size, the sea snails.

Home-made mayonnaise, you would easily eat even plastic with it. Besides, everything’s for 5-10 euros.

Dorada with couscous – exactly a by-the-book one; the prominent side-faces of regular customers queasily messing about with bouillabaisse and inspecting croutons, with the same censoriousness.

As a separate line: a whole page on the board covered with chalk writings; for instance, it says a pan fried sole for 22eur; “but to see her was to love her; love but her and love for ever” (c) – the phantom fish, just like Paris itself – single sidestep, and all of it comes to an end: burned, smells of toilet, inedible, bones only… It’s not like that in here, everything’s as it should be: grab it either with a spoon or with you hands right from the bones, that thin, oven-smelling stratum of fish, and you’ll be rewarded, just like in arcade games at a bonus level; that’s a real bouquet of tastes, made fit in layers of this simple piece.

Overall, a good place. Just don’t spill the beans to each and every one, ok?

stunning compound meal, french and japanese at the same time, like a bilingual child. and it comes together with absolutely, totally odd service. laughably – half-assed and messed up!

there was a feeling that we’re at a bachelor party of a talented slob. he’s crazy about flavors, textures, technics, and he’s incredibly successful with that. and dirty socks covering with duckweed on the sofa and a bra of his ex-girlfriend dangling from the chandelier doesn’t bother him at all.

obviously, our quartet wasn’t less nuts. so:

– left without wine pairing, eventually, we just poured wine from the bottles forgotten on our table by waiters;

– not getting someone to clean away flocks of crumbs, we swept them into napkins on our own;

– not being able to explain ourselves either verbally or by gestures, we squeezed out of japanese google translator something that made other 8 guests in the restaurant choke with laughter.

all we wanted was just to find out how many courses we should expect ‘cause they had no menu. they announced 11 courses. but the chef was on fire. so we got two various sets instead of one and tried 15 various dishes. and each of them was mercilessly good.

i’m a nerd, though, i couldn’t see any order in the plot of the set: “misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms” in the version of #i-put-my-best-clothes-all-at-once”. but it really was the best clothes. no fooling around and with indispensable curtsey towards locality and seasonality.

for instance, foie gras mousse with dill and apples, weightless and dense simultaneously, seemed more of a dessert than a snack. far from simple and at the same time absolutely comprehensible. actually, i got sorta short circuit from the thing: the combination of flavors and aromas immediately sent me 35 years back to a vegetable garden of my grandma zoe, into a morning. i don’t know why. bam! you’re 7, you’re picking currant right from a bush into a bucket on your neck, and meanwhile eating up the environment. and among the environment there happen to be a young dill head and an underripe apple.

or another thing: a crazy fern nest, deep-fried, crunchy, salty – an excellent appetizer for a company, it awakens both receptors and conversations, though not like subtle iphone-ish purring, but as an unquestionable toll a warm balmy ship’s bell. the same babylon from the technical point of view, but it can’t be clearer – friends, football or movies; lots of fizzy sparkling one. and with hands! with hands! instead of fries and chips.

and crepes?! all these crepes, sweet and with vanilla ice cream on top, you know-get it? they also have it. but it’s different. a laced buckwheat crepe with mushrooms and poached egg inside. and with truffle ice cream. and please, repeat this crepe after a dessert. yes, after a dessert. and let my ass grow. yes, repeat! oh yes. please! we’re flying away in ten hours! oh pleaaaaaassssse, repeat this narcotic crepe. it’ll be my breakfast.

the text’s rolling and rolling like green buns from narisawa. 02:45 of flight still left to moscow. if it goes on rolling, i’ll loose my readers’ retention. and i feel good inside this retention as if wrapped in a blanket or in gumshoes in the forest, if you’re walking upon the dew after wild strawberries. i’ll force myself to finish the text. wild strawberries with dew for dessert.

Not a review, rather a small note.

If you happen to shop in Dubai Mall – and, most likely, you will, when in Dubai, ‘cause there’s absolutely nothing to do here), you can safely go for a snack to Café Blanc.

The thing is that by chance I’ve been coming to this department store for many and many times and therefore had an opportunity to taste nearly half of the food market’s assortment. Starting from Armani (the café in the mall; though their nearby restaurant isn’t actually impressive, not in the least bit, if only by its prices) up to Thai Wagamama, Red Lobster, and some “Japanese” fast food (where fish travels on rails), and so on.

To be honest, everything is very «so-so» (which was duly expected).

‘What did you want? In a shopping mall!’ you’d say.

‘Something to drink/eat/relax!’ I bravely retort. ‘Shopping is a very energy-intensive activity’.

So, willy-nilly you’ll have to eat something here. And if there’s no desire to drag yourself somewhere-fuck-knows-where with your bags full of consumerism shit and “hunger catches you unawares”, you can land right there, on the spot.

Cafe Blanc is the Lebanese cuisine. Delicious hummus, babaganush and mutabal (eggplant puree with various toppings).

Excellent large salads with greens, baked beetroots, cheese, kinoa, nuts, etc.

Proper fresh juices (demand a pomegranate one!).

For the main course, we had some local thing: lamb with rice and various spices/herbs baked under thin lavash. Perfect! Especially when it comes with pomegranate sauce (ask for it, they bring it separately).

We haven’t ordered the desserts, though. (New dresses completely spoil appetite).

Well, and a pleasant bonus: you can sit on the terrace facing fountains and smoke a hookah. Or (a lifehack!!) leave your boys there and go to zero out their credit cards)).

I hate markets. If there’s something that I hate even more, that’s oriental markets.

Mud, crowd, heap of garbage; everyone’s yelling, skinging you and dragging somewhere…

‘Oh-oh-oh, do get it! Oh, sea bass! You take two! Just great!’

Hate it.

Now imagine a market in sharp contrast: an oriental one, clean to sterility, where they not just shampoo the pavement, but also wash it with sand, and then still rub it with stones. Where people, in perfectly clean white robes, keep silent, do not drag you anywhere. Where you can enter any shop and try everything, have a look, put it back and, when you leave without buying anything, at most you’ll hear:

‘Good bye!’

Can you imagine that? So, this is it.

A few quarters of modern replica accurately reproducing Assassin’s Creed I, just as you remember it, up to micro-details.

A wide street full of food, where you must visit https://rere.vision/2018/04/05/souq-waquif-decide- you- know- -lux-s /, and you can also go to Tajine and Royal Tandoor; they also have fast food outlet all around the market, here and there: viscous Turkish ice cream, kebabs, curry, sweets, some crap, hookahs, tea, again some crap, flatbread, salads, meat, meat, and meat…

And in the curly alleyways, it’s all just like the classical author has it:

«»What a cheerful little print!» exclaimed the lady who was agreeable in all respects, gazing at the dress of the lady who was simply agreeable.

«Yes, it is very cheerful. Praskovia Fedorovna, however, thinks that it would be better if the checks were somewhat smaller and if the polka dots were not brown but blue. Her sister was sent some material—it’s so bewitching that one simply can’t express it in words. Just imagine: teeny-weeny stripes, so-o-o narrow, as narrow as human imagination can picture; the background is blue, and running across the stripe is a design of little eyes and tiny twigs, little eyes and tiny twigs, all over…. In a word, it’s beyond all compare!”» (c)

Something like that, but it concerns everything: rags, cloths, textile, spices, gold, oil perfumes, Iranian products, fruits, dates, birds, fishes, rabbits, fancy chests from Yemen, Moroccan teas and lamps, and a huge amount of goods called «some kind of unknown crap» (c).

They’re officially open 24/7, but it’s not exact here; most of the places are open 8-13, break, and then 16-22, though there’re some enthusiasts who are keen on 24/7.

WOW list

01 Iranian narsharab. It has nothing to do with the one you get here, except the color. The sauce always remains the sauce without turning into sweet bitumen.

Well, and the taste… this is a gastro-weapon: metal, sweetness, iodine, sourness, and also some spicy feedbacks – all of these mixed and archived in order to explode in your mouth afterwards. In our media Iran is an endless war, so here is another bomb.

Price: 70 rials (about $21) for 800 g.

02 The next treasure is oil perfumes: there’s an entire street about them here; though, by the way, I’d recommend to avoid it and to look for certain places scattered here and there, owned by some old men-alchemists.

To buy faceted, transparent, crystal, like Christmas tree toys, bottles (70 rials) and pour them in right there, trying each kind.

Starting from some easy, yet nice, vanilla-floral mixes, and up to Arabian rough options that smell of blood and raw wood.

30-150 rials for 5 ml.

For my liking, this is a perfect gift.

03 The dates. Oh, yes – exactly those ones. Somehow, in my life, just like love, they passed by: practically, I haven’t been to Africa or Israel, and the dry black oversweet poo-like ones you find in our stores have never awaken any respondent sentiments in my soul.

Until now.

We were lucky to get there exactly at the moment when at the square next to the Souk they raised a few hundred meter pandal that attracted our attention as if we were some magpies. So what? Upon entering, we found out that all this ENTIRE “VDNKh”… was selling dates!

Fucking 18,563,322 kinds of dates!

And we started tasting them: black, greenish, olive, sallow, pine-apple reddish, transparent like amber, on branches and in boxes, poisonous-sweet and dense creamy (though not sickishly sweet), nuanced, with unfailing viscous-fondand feeling.

Overall, the thing was re-invented for me, like, for example, morning ricotta in Italy, for those who’ve had it only outside the Italian borders.

If you are less lucky and there’s no pandal, do not worry: everywhere around the bazar, in the very same Iranian food outlets, you’ll find them at the price of 15 rials for a box depending on the kind and quality. The most important thing is to try. Try them – here it is allowed!

04 Qatar sweets at 60 rials per kilo, made of nougat, nuts, marmalade – unlike their Turkish relatives, they aren’t sickishly sweet; you aren’t ashamed after having had 4-5 pieces of them.

Seems like they are natural. At least one can unmistakably tell which one is of pomegranate, or of tangerine, or of rose, etc.

They also have good, if you’ll pardon the word, organoleptics: they’re pleasant to look at and to hold in hands.

05 And the last thing about the bazar: trivial as it is, the spices. Any kind, whatever comes to your mind, dealt in sacks, baskets, fancy boxes, like high-quality saffron, or in colored sharp cones, there’s everything in here (c).

And, most importantly, unlike at other Asian (and not only) countries, you can get just a pinch and go further; no one will grab your hand (I hate that), yell “buy more, my friend!!!” (I really hate that), or tout you inside a shop (hate that) – it’s like you’re somewhere in Tokyo, at Omotesando, in a boutique: everyone keeps silent and waits for your orders.

It appears at night, strictly when you need it most: when after bars/clubs you’re walking in the dark back home to the Old Town or from it, and a hot langoustine cream-soup is a true necessity.

It’s not really ultimately excellent, yet for fast-food it’s quite a peculiar phenomenon, not only the soup that has several spoonfuls of langoustine tails at the bottom of the cup and a generous chunk of cream above it all (in addition to cream in the soup), but also a salad and sandwiches, also stuffed with shellfish.

On the square, besides the lobstery™, there’re other tents, one of which, selling lamb shawarma and burgers also deserves mentioning. Yes, price here, like anywhere in Iceland are up to $20 for a shawarma/burger; but what a fucking good stuff it is! – pieces of incredible local lamb mixed with leaves, almost with no sauce, are stuffed in a huge roll of lavash; it’s fantastic!

The best way is to grab it and to run to your room, luckily, the entire city center is a square kilometer at most; to open an ice cold bottle of Clicquot and to share it all with you vis-à-vis, 6 a.m., right in the hotel bed, indecently slurping and munching with most gross sounds and spilling champagne on linens.

Do enjoy!

PS: And then you can go on hanging out until dawn, it’s still a while before that, about 5-6 hours.