A tiny pencil case for 8 tables at Rozhdestvensky Boulevard where you could never find any food except coffee with buns.

Not for free. But also it isn’t madly expensive. Do pay attention to the quantity of everything and the prices of the separate dishes.

As we were starving, we ordered 6 scallops, 2 urchins, a langouste, an octopus, clams and a barramundi.

The fish stall was full of options. It’s a pity I took a photo just before the closing. Someone had gobbled up most of it. Indeed, the food disappears pretty quickly from this stall.

Sweet hipster staff, which however got out of disgusting skinny jeans. There was a boy wrapped in something like a mixture of Yamamoto and Thom Krom. It was pleasant to look at him.

There’s no grill, but a stove and a pan and that’s for the better. More than likely the food won’t be over-burnt.

The prices jump. For example, 5 shrimps cost around $45. We asked 6, but they brought less, as well as less clamps and urchins. Probably, the quantity of what we ordered didn’t match our look, shabby from Saturday. Indeed, solvency isn’t written all over one’s face. Ok, and the whole langouste with potatoes and extremely tasty baked corn sliced into circles was only around $25. Oh well…

In general, everything was tasty. Only the clams were not good. I see sense only in scallops, oysters and mussels. The rest is from despair, to expand the menu, whatever. Obviously, it does not concern Japan.

So the scallops here, ceviche with 30 seconds of marination, do get the credit and you can have as much as you want. The price is more than adequate as they are not large. The kilo clams from Vladivostok weight up to a ton especially if you “weight them in grammes”.

Shrimps and the langouste were excellent, barramundi was ok but you have the full stall to choose from.

It is a breakthrough for Moscow. Especially against such places as “La Marée” and “ERWIN”.

You see mostly young people here. It’s great that they get to see some fish without getting on the plane.

In short, I congratulate you, Muscovites! Finally, there is a place to have fish/seafood in “plenty style” with no need to drown it in sauces and additives and that’s fucking cool!

Do enjoy.

The Dead Sea is a good thing, but the place is really «dead».

At least, on the Jordanian coast there is absolutely nothing to do. They have several private hotels along the sea and silence. Even in Kempinski Ishtar Dead Sea with its huge territory, seven restaurants and spa by the third day you begin to howl.

Ok.  We get a car and go for a wander.

The driver, Ahmad, is a good-looking gray-haired Jordanian in a black suit, speaks good English. He tells us that in Jordan all children have to learn English at school. In fact, we had no problems communicating with the locals.

Having crisscrossed all the holy sites, we begin to think of food in material sense. Ahmad promises to take us to “a beautiful place» in Aqaba.

«It is clear,» we think, «Now he’ll take us to some local hell-hole with a gift-shop belonging to the brother of his younger wife, etc. (Forgive us, Ahmad, for thinking badly of you!) So, we agree, as there are no other options and we don’t want to go back to the hotel.

Indeed, the sign reads “Restaurant & Gift Shop”. All right, we have already arrived, so we’ll take a look. Besides, the vintage S-klasse, carefully parked opposite the entrance, draws our attention.

According to the Jordanian standards everything inside is quite decent. Near the entrance there’s the “2005 Best Tourist Restaurant” figurine, although you can’t see any tourists. Only locals are around and they’re obviously not orphans.

Further, there’s mutton on grill with mint sauce on pita, the most tender hot flatbread, delightful mutabal, kofta. In short, the typical kebab/tomato delio as it should be. And yes, excellent Lebanese and Jordanian wine, they also have European wine, of course, but that wouldn’t be being a good sport in such a place.

Laura Bush and other respectable people won’t allow lies to be told.

In front of you there is an unfortunate person whose whole life is a struggle. The struggle is for food supplies of the planet by means of financial equivalent. She, who in a month, spends a quarter of a small African state’s budget, doesn’t fear the cold, or know of hunger.

Because all she does is eat.

She doesn’t know the word «expensive» for food, nor for cookbooks. What did you do to me so I get in line for oyster in the middle of flourishing bourgeois Boulevard Saint-Germain? What??

Ok, the fuck with me. But what did they do to all those beyond well-off people, so they stand in queue? In Paris! Here they stop offering oysters just because they are really bored with them. Why are they all in line, breathing down each other’s necks like typical “russotouristos”? Moreover, in front of this off-white 50-meter booth — you couldn’t even call it a café.

But they do line up.

They are after the milky-waxy ripeness of young oysters from the Mont Saint-Michel estuary, which are cut open with the speed of light by one and the same scissorshands-man, five days a week (except Sunday and Monday). He is heavy-built and dark-haired. He has huge hands, cut-up by thousands of oysters (for some reason he works without gloves). He smiles and drinks wine with you. Regarding his job, he says “everyone works”. He doesn’t want to reveal his deep secret to someone as superficial as me, who just can’t get how the hell it’s possible to do the same manual labour, at the same place, for 15 years. To me, it’s the same great achievement as painting the Sistine Chapel lying on one’s back. Only the result is slightly different.

There’s a monument for the centuries or heaps of shell shards and gobbled-up mollusks. For some reason though, I don’t ask myself how I’ve managed to do the same thing for the past 20 years without leaving behind a monument or heap, only some satiated people.

Besides freshness, the shop has two more advantages. The price for one. These are the cheapest opened oysters in Paris. Secondly, the lack of choice (therefore there’s no decision-making process).

Everyone here gets oysters, sweet shrimps, and strong, but traditionally too “ambé”, Mediterranean urchins. It all goes with Muscadet and water. Bread and butter is also possible. And that’s it.

No questions like, “Oh, what kind of oysters do you have today?” —nor a further list of 12 items, as in Moscow. Nothing like, “and do you have soup?” No, no effing soup. And no salads, main courses, or desserts either. Only oysters grown by the same family in the intersections of salty and fresh waters, where oysters lose their sharp iodized salt and get a light-salted nut flavor. Fresh water increases their fat and body volume as well. It’s a small shell crammed with tender mussel – and it’s worth trying.

Sometimes Regis has two more species of oysters. «From neighbors». But his semi-fresh-water ones still remain the best and people are magnetically drawn towards them throughout the whole of Paris, sometimes throughout the whole of Europe, as if hypnotized. And you know what? I’ll go as well, buy a ticket, yes, fly to have this ambrosia and some Muscadet with this dark-haired man whose big kind hands are cut by oysters.

Once over a bottle of green juice that I shared with a raw vegan I got a recommendation to visit some “raw food”, a place at Patriarshiye Ponds called Ra Family. At first, I thought that the place was named Raw Family. It was logical to assume so, taking into consideration the given course of our convo. It turned out that no. The name of this cafe/yoga/spirit-training center is Ra Family.

I didn’t manage to find out whether the ancient Egyptian sun god Amon-Ra, or the Indian prince’s title of Raja, or the archaic Russian Ra which means light was the root cause of their name; but what I did manage was to eat deliciously there and almost without feeling like the odd one at the raw feast of life, (cause that’s what this place truly is).

As I’ve already said, this isn’t just a vegan cafe, it’s strict vegan. Food heated above 40 degrees Celsius isn’t suitable for them. People choose to live under such restrictions for various reasons: health problems, search for the fountain of youth at the bottom of a coconut water can, moral and ethical reasons (those are the most vegan bigot part of the entire subculture), or as a way to raise one’s level of spirituality through body and consciousness purification by means of living food (all good, if it makes them happy). Anyway, you won’t be able to just drop by and skip their special vibes.

As soon as you take a seat, they serve you a glass of refreshing water (lemon, cucumber, mint). By the way, it feels very right. Perhaps, this is a homage to the healthy lifestyle maxim: “drink a glass of water before each meal”.

We ordered a lot of everything («ain’t no way we gonna be full after this leaf meal, is it?”)). Of course, we couldn’t make it without the traditional tough guy joke about beer, meat and the need to visit a burger shop right after (oh, how smart!). So, we sit there and wait. People around us are very different. At first glance, you won’t be able to grasp whether they’re raw vegan or just some pretentious folks.

They bring us soups. We try them – a coconut one with vegetables and a variation on gazpacho (with beetroot). Good, everyone likes it. Oh, here comes the salad; it’s so very light, green, with grapefruit; the dressing’s peculiar – it’s based on dates. Rolls without rice under a vulgar name of Philadelphia are a success. There is also a raw pizza with nut sauce (hmm… oh well, ok) and a vegan cheese plate. The latter one is plated really neatly: three kinds of pasta (cheese) made of vegetables/nuts/hell-knows-what with soaked figs, dried tomatoes, algae bread crisps and a beetroot salad on the side. Extremely nourishing.

But how can we do without a dessert?!! That’s no good. Our choice fell upon chocolate cake and berry ice cream. I didn’t notice any special differences from other similar desserts of the same degree of healthiness, though everything was really delicious (no flour/sugar, etc., AMEN). In Ra Family there is no coffee. So we had sweet carob and Buddha-tea with spices. We stood up (or rather crawled away) from the table at 5 p.m. Next time it became possible for us just to think about food only the next day around lunchtime (looks like the cheese plate got tough on us). Summary: it’s delicious and really very nutritious. Watch the quantity. We could’ve been full with half we ordered. Oh yeah, and do not mess with raw vegans and their food. What if they curse you, and afterwards you won’t be able to eat anything ever again…

PS:  There was some respectable man at the next table. At first he had a really notable dessert in the form of a chocolate ball (it was the last one, there wasn’t any left for me; I even shamelessly asked the mister to take a picture of his plate), then a cheeseburger (it looked really cool, but I decided not to nightmarize the man any longer: my plan is to come back with an proper inspection), and he finished it up with a cherry borscht. So it was. Just like this. A dinner in the fashion of Benjamin Button)) Some doctors really argue that you should start your meal with a dessert (glucokinase is an enzyme, and it carefully monitors the amount of the intake of starch and glucose and gives you the feeling of satiety), but it was a surprise for me to see that people really do so. It made me think. In short, it’s a true almshouse. You come with one food deviation; you leave with a whole bunch of them.

— When does the last ferry to the island depart?

— Seems like at 21:00.

We’ve got an hour and a half and our route includes a ferry. So, it is 35 minutes by ferry, the rest is by car. If we are at the ferry in 15 minutes without killing ourselves, we will be on time.

We’re rushing through narrow, twisting Norwegian roads. It is good that we’ve already got down from the mountains by the Trolls’ Path and now there’s no serpentine. Frightening away local Teslas, we reach the ferry parking. Next is to insert the card into the ticket man’s belt terminal. “Come on, guys, you are the last ones. We depart!” – he says.

Thirty-five minutes respite while the ferry is taking us from Vestnes to Molde. It is possible to take a breath and try, despite shivering hands, to make some pictures of the mountains, which are rising from the grey ripple of med fjord.

The smell of burnt rubber and superheated brakes pursues us after we left the ferry. Hit the gas! We’re flying through the bridges of the most beautiful road in the world (according to the Norwegian marketers) aka The Atlantic Road, shouting, “no death, motherfucker!”

— Where is the fucking parking and the fucking marina?

Oh well, not even a marina, just a pier for two small boats. There’s one in its place. Phew! Seems like we made it! The descendant of local fishermen, huge, tow-haired, bearded and tattooed man was dozing in the captain’s chair.

— Man, here we are! Are you waiting for us? Hurrah, we are on time!

— You didn’t have to hurry, guys. I would wait for you anyway. No problem.

— But on the website, it was written that …

In short, fools are we!

A boat is taking us to a small island, it doesn’t take long. We’ve left the sea behind and now are on the North Atlantic. There’s a typical Norwegian fishing village on the island. Red wooden houses with turf roofs, a shed for boats, a pier, gangways, nets, oyster traps. Besides modern yachts and boats of different calibers, there is an authentic wood boat moored at the pier. Exactly on this one mad Norwegians managed to reach Australia (Thor Heyerdahl is not their only hero!).

The former fishing village with the buildings, which have remained since the 17th century is converted into a 50-room hotel with a restaurant and a pub (the restaurant and the pub are two different institutions).

Having thrown things into the room in traditional Norwegian style, we decided to have something to eat and drink. Necessary after a long journey.

Aha, a proper drop in! (c)

On the menu, there is fish and seafood bastards from the nearby waters, moose meat, boar meat and other local specialties. Traditional Norwegian cuisine, not without refinement, but without siphon, nitrogen and sous-vide.

Everything is THE FRESHEST. No wonder, it all was in the sea this morning with hopes for the well-off old age.

First, fish with crabs under crunchy Riesling in the restaurant, then the Norwegian IPA with moose meat in the pub. And, to sleep under the noise of the ocean. Tomorrow we have to reach Trondheim.