I’ve been meditating on how to write this text and decided to clip the wings of epithets, leaving behind everything that is important to me personally as this place requires closer attention; a bunch of emotions won’t do the job properly.

The Brothers’ new restaurant “Twins Garden” ™ blew up rather than opened, like a tree on fertilized soil, on the most worshipful place, where one of the first gastro-meccas of the city, “Varvara”™ restaurant, used to break my stereotypes of taste and price.

We enter and go through a mirror-and-birch hallway, then up to the 7^th floor in a private elevator and literally get to the kitchen.

Here you immediately find yourself, and it’s hard not to notice it, in sorta “Scandinavian” space – it’s functional, with an open kitchen and open materials: no aluminum, frosted glass and other queer stuff – the glass is transparent and there’s stone, textured metal and wood.

(The second floor is more cocktail/twilight; we’ll discuss it after a closer look).

It was mad funny the way neighboring tables full of “respectable people” were looking at us: two clowns in floor-length skirts and teared Japanese clothes, disheveled and obviously still messed up since yesterday; by some reason chefs themselves were bringing them all the dishes and actually paying them too much attention – this dissonance, I must say, was sorta weirdly cute and, dare I say it, remained in my memory.

Everything here is for the sake of food: local light above each table, and virtually invisible design without any fucking Moscow show-off. However, panoramic view of the city behind the window is still there, but no distraction.

The only thing that I might like to correct – there should be just a tiny little bit less brightness of ambient light between tables, because it makes everything way too detailed, like on a catwalk.

We take a seat and stumble upon the unrealistic figure of 35eur for… ha-ha! for a set of 7 (sic) courses. This is a kind of generosity, unprecedented even for post-crisis Moscow.

But let’s get to the food, the main thing here. Yet I have to say at once, that Brothers expanded the set for us a little as we were starving after Saturday booze at Simachev bar.

Let’s get back to our courses: first we were served bread and unrefined sunflower oil made on fried seeds (hereinafter: most of the produce come from their farm, somewhere near Kaluga, where they threaten to arrange a summer restaurant). Ok, we’ve seen all types of bread and unrefined oil, but! Here the concentration of smell in a bottle is like it’s some kind of dandelion wine, and immediately the bell rings loudly in my head, and: it’s summer, there’s my aunt Sonya’s cow Zorka, and a grassy slope towards Volga, and I stretch my hand with a chunk of bread with this very same oil, slightly squinting, as I’m afraid it might bite me out of greediness, while it’s trying to eat the bread with its warm, watery, huge lips.

A click. Pfff… what was I talking about?

Overall, it’s some fucking awesome oil; and memories worth holding on to…

I’m fond of Brothers’ food, and I know it well on their previous places. I won’t praise it: it’s firmly established in Moscow gastro-life; here it’s like Japanese anime that has grown out of Disney classics; it’s brought to a brave new level.

I’ll dwell upon the new stuff. And upon what I’ve missed in the CITY.

That is VEGETABLES.

Either because of the farm, or it’s something else, but yesterday all the vegetable side dishes were bulging into a separate, absolutely independent type of meal; which was difficult to imagine earlier, when I used to take vegetables for some kind of obligatory and rather awkward addition.

It’s not like that here.

Everything that lies on a plate next to meat/fish is as valuable as animal/protein forms of life.

Of course, the Garden Salad is a another story: a mixture of root crops, vegetable caviar, vegetables, and leaves. Besides, all the components are of fucking completely different temperature.

Fragile because of nitrogen mint leaves, semi-icy caviar, room-temperature vegetables, baked hot roots – all these temperature gradients are still unbearably rare in the capital: not only a dish can’t be saved for later, but it’s being constructed right under your nose.

And this unpretentiously looking plate literally explodes with tastes: temperatures are multiplied by consistency and texture, and they hit taste buds like an orchestral volley. The war. The revolution. And then a small putsch, fading out, and an echo.

This is fucking awesome™; the fact that you get that high even without any meat – le plus grand respect.

I also have to mention finely made lemonades, for example the birch one… and all the other items in the set on which you can easily gorge yourself for desired $40.

More-moreover, they also have these non-sweet, kinda northern-restrained desserts. Including little birches with vegetables (sic!) extracts turned into candies/jellies.

So, I congratulate the CITY on a new acquisition and I wish it fair winds.

And, tomorrow I’ll go study the menu besides the set: it’s huge and requires my attention.

Bravo, guys!

PS: They’ve got a huge enoteca, 70% of which, according to the chefs, is brought by Brothers themselves, and can’t be find at the majors.

PPS: There’ll be a chef’s table laboratory soon, for 4-6 people at most, with no menu: bare experiments/improvisations. I’m looking forward to it.

PPPS: And yes, if this place is able to turn a half-drunk awakening into a night to remember, it’s worth a lot.

Do enjoy.