One can scold Nobu as much as he or she wants but “to my taste scolding it is indeed bad taste” (c), it is out of style. Nobu is like Chanel, your last resort when you want to be certain that someone has thought for you and the result is guaranteed.

Of course, there are exceptions, in Moscow in Nobu only a crazy man would eat or someone who really doesn’t care of themselves. The same is true about NY, but actually, there they gobble up and rejoice at such things that in comparison even Moscow would go for a gastro-paradise.

But who would tell me that in LA, in Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, in Tokyo or in Milan, it isn’t tasty?

Oh yeah! Sure!

Indeed, it is a touristy/expat place, but this fact doesn’t make miso cod less fishy, tuna tartare less tartare and rolls, which are not at all Japanese, less fucking awesome.

All the rest is gastro-snobbery.

For example, you have been traveling all over superb Toscana, Veneto, Lombardy and everywhere it is incredibly tasty, but your soul needs to make a break, so there you are with your packages of Margiela/Gucci/H&M going to Armani for a lunch right at the time it opens.

The first thing that should put you in the right mood is a small but indeed a real queue. A queue in MILAN for a lunch where you can easily get a lunch set for 33 Euros! But it is more cool here, 20-45! And mostly Italians are in the queue!

“What’s the matter with them?”

The answer is very simple, it is fucking TASTY!

Among the four unpretentious dishes for two people: tartare, cod, rolls/sushi; none was a failure, moreover there was absolutely nothing to complain about.

Of course little to do with Tsukiji, but if you compare it to Tokyo…

Tokyo is far behind.

In Italy it is not all that well with sushi bars:

it isn’t daily food.

good sushi cost a lot.

in Europe I’ve hardly ever had sushi similar to Milan’s Nobu, and definitely never rolls of the same quality.

Tuna! It isn’t the sluggish brown fish, which is found in the ocean to the left side from Portugal. Probably, they know some secret! It is delicious! And chuttoro strongly differs from akami not only in color, but also in taste.

The cod is a masterpiece. As usual, actually.

Rolls are excellent, but oddly enough especially those with salmon on top and drops of yuzu.

Or, that’s just me as a yuzu addict.

Do enjoy!

Now I’ll save you two hours of your time and won’t let you fuck up your lunch, as well as your mood. It’s because the entire re:re™ is about the mood, that’s what we consider the main thing here. I’ll explain you how to get there, I’m not greedy alright.

Step 1: Turn off the navigation in your car, otherwise it’ll take you up a blind alley.

Step 2: Input into your Google maps the following address: «Coccaglio Via Sul Montorfano, 28 — 25030».

Step 3: Reach double red traffic light and wait till it becomes green.

Step 4: Pedal to the metal — you have to do the next 400 meters of a twisting road in 20 seconds.

Step 5: Follow the signs along this “fantasy path”: there’s a slope and woods on your right, and an abyss on you left.

Ok, you’re there, well done!

Believe me – it was worth it.

Right in that beautiful house on the top of the hill with a terrace and airplane views happiness is waiting for you.

And don’t expect any delicacies, expect honest, rich, mad tasty food for 10-15 EUR for a plate.

You won’t find any risotto-al-dente-with-thin-aroma-of-sauce-and-everything™ here. For example, there will be an OVEN TRAY full of rice in hyper pesto SAUCE and such tomatoes that if you photograph them, they’ll be like climbing up to you.

They’ll attack.

There’ll be hyper CARPACCIO. You’ll get a plate, which is full from one edge to another. There’ll be hyper PARMA with melon, and huge pieces of porcini will fervently float in risotto with lots of parmesan.

As well, you’ll get hyper SEMIFREDDO AND TIRAMISU.

Of course, truffle, though the summer one (what should you count it for?) – rub it before the plate gets brown, sure.

That’s it.

Two pages of the menu have columns, it’s short and has about 6 types of risotto and various meats. Everything’s tasty.

And some fucking awesome desserts.

PS: Oh yeah, Franciacorta is just behind the hill, so respectively: there’s a full list of sparkling wine (I call it champagne) including various refinements such as Annamaria Clementi 2007.

PPS: And one more thing, this risotto is tolerant of any transfers. When cold, it seems even more tasty – you aren’t distracted by the “hot” factor and can completely absorb the taste.

In short, it’s really easy to take it away, even on a long flight – so you can please your friends back home.

To the country, away from Venice!

Do you know how I see in advance if a Michelin restaurant’s going to be good or not? Simple: if it’s located in the middle of nowhere, in an empty field, without a view, but with blank walls with no windows, and has had two stars for a really long time, just like this place, which actually has been open for 50 years already (the year is the anniversary), everything will be fucking awesome.

After all, no one will ever drag oneself into the cornfields and/or tractor factories in the evening, wearing diamonds and with family, paying 165 EUR for one person – eventually, there should be a reason for all this “whooozhh”!

Looking ahead, I have to say that there really is a good reason!

As we were approaching, we saw that the restaurant met all the requirements: there was a hangar/field/tractor there, and a road to the right, and a house with no windows to the left (but let’s put it straight, the house had a perfect garden and a polished yard).

At the entrance, we find ourselves in a piece of Japan: maples, a bridge, maples, bamboo – though it’s very contemporary – everything’s strictly geometric. We face the door with a bell, a glass door, but it’s closed – hello!

We enter.

Now I have to make a digression: why is a gastro critic worse than, for example, a film critic? The former causes more damage.

Indeed, it’s been a while since anyone truly wanted to watch the “best film of the year” which received an Oscar, something like Moonlight, for Christ’s sake, because everyone knows for sure: this will be some imprudent faggot’s dick, which is interesting exclusively for certain members of Oscar voters. Still if someone has started watching the film, it can always be turned off and/or changed for something else. It’s even possible to leave the auditorium and jump into the next one, if you’re in the cinema.

Speaking about multi-star restaurants, it’s the same “faggot’s dick” in half of the cases, but it has to do with food. And you won’t be able to fucking turn it off – you’ll have to pay your 500EUR or more for two people and as well spoil the night for yourself and for your vis-à-vis. “You’ve ordered it, now you have to eat it!” (c).

Therefore, gastro criticism is the most harmful specialization of the profession.

So there we were, walking towards our table, ready to pour 750EUR down the drain or to spend it on an “I’m lucky!” thing.

And we were lucky that day.

The design met us with void and perfect zoning: opaque cloth shields, which didn’t even reach the floor, divided the hall into three rooms and, if needed, could organize the space in different ways, transforming it into a chamber or a banquet hall. One could feel some incompleteness there, though a pleasant one.

Then the light: there’s only one source of light above each table, but what a good one! It creates a very soft light spot in the center of the table with PERFECT shadows, and this light decreases towards the edges, drowning the guests in the semidarkness and leaving the food on the forestage. It’s visible in the pictures below.

Ok, I say to myself, special effects alone can’t fully satisfy one’s hunger… and here we go.

First, there was an aperitif: the cocktails form the short menu, which suddenly turned out to be mad tasty, complicated, multilayered, and still leaving waves of aftertastes behind.

Then they served bread that looked like a soloist on a stage in a spotlight.

It was a sabotage. You know, such kind of bread, true bread of all bread, so that you sit there and look at it and persuade yourself:

“No, no, no, no, no and no. I won’t eat it. Right now, I’m on a diet. Oh well, but what would happen if I had only one piece, with some olive oil…”

Oh, how fast the loaf came to its end! (c).

Let’s move on: there’s some fucking awesome crudo of 8 kinds of fish and seafood with algae sauce, the quality of which is high to such an extent that you can distinguish lobster from scampi even with your eyes shut.

By the way, they easily changed three courses in the set for my mom as she doesn’t eat raw stuff. So, instead of crudo festival they threw some unbearably delicious analogue of deconstructed bouillabaisse in front of her.

Incredible cold pasta with tartare of gamberi rossi and mustard sauce, which activates all the taste buds and stays there like an echo till the next course.

Razor Clam soup in a glass, complicated by tomatoes and croutons.

Golden shrimp with tuna tartare, barely ‘frightened’ by fire, with a set of faery sauces/additives.

Then there was RISOTTO with raw scampi and tomatoes (I had it added to the set only because of my greediness). “I wish I could always live this way” (c).

So this razzle-dazzle thing lasted till the desserts, with a slight “failure” in the form of turbo bread, but oh well, it should be forgiven.

Finally, there was a trio of desserts. I’m not into desserts at all, so I was drinking digestives.

Overall, it’s worth a trip – well-assembled, smart and mad tasty food – it’s definitely worth its 165eur for a set.

PS: And yes, 90% of people around us were Italians. Admit it, this means a lot. You won’t fuck them over. They aren’t Chinese tourists.

Once a very/very/very/very/very long time ago – it’s been about 20 years, – I almost accidentally got here –  to a farm which was close to the city-castle-on-a-high-hill™.

And in an instant I was head over heels in love…

… with the poppy fields, which had barely ever been trampled upon: there was neither the “eat-pray-fuck” ™ thing yet, nor the hyper-dull teenage saga move “Twilight”™ (to me, the presence of the City in the frame is the only thing that keeps the series from a complete failure). All this was absolutely absent back then.

… and with ramsons near the country road, which you could just tear and eat; and with the waterfall of hills – there/right there downward/downward fast – into the purple clover: you stumble, fall and roll downhill upside down with your sunbathe tower. The sky’s blinking, the grass stains all your cloths with its green color; but back then you didn’t even know what the word “Prada” meant – so you did never mind. You finally crash into the grass, and then catch your breath, and listen to the eternal cuckoo, and count how many times it sings its song – that is the number of years you’re going to live. In here, the cuckoo will easily grant you immortality, because together with its comrades they don’t shut up for days handing over the baton to each other from one hill to another.

… and with these hills themselves, endlessly trying on shadow, then light, and then shadow again, throwing these two on one another. Their colors are unstable too: May – everything’s green, rose, lemon and violet with splashes of red marks of poppies here and there; the very beginning of June –  it all at once is changed into bronze/gold – as if it was autumn; but they are just playing.

… and with the greedy drinking from the jug out in the heat: you nearly suffocate because no way could expect to have let flow into your mouth a stream of cool red wine …

“?! ??!”

“But that’s what you asked for, to drink, not to wash yourself” (c).

… in love with-all-this.

Back then I didn’t realize that I’d have even a bigger crush on the city-castle-on-a-high-hill™ than on those hills and ramsons.

So, to put it briefly, the second city like this does not exist. Perhaps, that’s for the better.

It floats high above Tuscany. There a quay for promenades along the river, like in normal cities, but here it goes along the cliff with some truly airplane views, which you see behind the streetlights and passers-by, – they look like a genuine photo wallpaper.

Talking about this city is difficult and simple at the same time – it’s a visual tool for time observation™. It’s been here for more than 3500 years (and this isn’t any figurative expression); and while you’ve become 20 years older, the city doesn’t give a shit. Rome’s changing, but Volterra never is.

It was founded by some mythical Etruscans. They left behind some statuettes, incredible in elegance and imagery, with legs up to the sky, and their bronze horses –  and then disappeared. (Their statuettes are sort of weird, especially if you think about the things that were normally been sculpted in the area at the time). The local museum has them on display.

And that was the last that was ever seen of those Etruscans.

And where am I going with this?

Hmmm – you’ll be surprised, but the city remains the CITY: it goes on living behind this huge half-kilometer high rampart, inside of which there’re medieval houses packed with people as tightly as a Moscow bus. It pretends to be a fucking normal city! NORMAL, sure.

And this is incredible.

It’s quite challenging to get here. There’s no railway, you can go only by bus or by car, and there aren’t many hotels inside this multi-kilometer wall, which, if compared to Kremlin, would make the latter look like a toy.

There are some tourists, but only during the day. They almost vanish in the evening, and that’s when the miracle happens.

You start seeing locals everywhere: for example, in the park, which is hanging on the plateau above everything – and even higher; a lot of young folks are all around there, playing football and lying on the grass, kissing under the age-old Harry Potter trees. Or in the most popular bar, where there are so many people that there’s a crowd outside many dozens of meters long, blocking the street, which looks like a narrow twisted gap. Restaurants, bars and cafes are full of people, who just hang out outside and talk. Children, there’re lots of children around. There’s light in the houses of 12-15^th century. EVERYTHING’S ALIVE.

And you are inside of it.

There’s no other place where so much life would coexist with so much death. Centuries, millenniums of history. The amphitheater is here since the Roman times, and now they use it for a summer opera festival. Nothing remains idle or abandoned/uninhabited. The streets look like they’ve been cut through the solid stone –  but there also are islands of parks at every step. Alabaster quarries are the three hundred meter caves, located right under your feet in the center of the city. The towers are extremely high and have narrow windows, and upon all this right here…

… there’re children with their silly games and grown-ups on Aperol. During the night the retractable road blockers crawl right out from the millennial sampietrini, like teeth, and blink with their red eyes of LEDs; that’s because with your car you can squeeze EVERYWHERE, though at your own risk and peril – signs don’t mind that. There’s Wi-Fi, and a bunch of young blood, and laughter, flying through the rays of the streets and echoing for a long time as clashing against the stone.

Hair, breath, hair, breath, you two are together, and there’re millions of days inside the stones that surround you. Everything is real, even too real.

And, of course, there’s ALTITUDE.

It’s when each route, each glance faces the sky and the horizon, which is far far away, where the burgundy lights flash upon the blades of windmills up in the hills: u-u-uffff-Uf, u-u-u-fff-Uf as they pulse.

As if you were looking at the ghost of Tokyo in the distance.

Everything is connected.

PS: Well, of course, the most Tuscan food is here, boars/pigeons/pheasants, florentine, lentils, truffle, pecorino, pasta and ragout – everything’s in there for you to lick your plate.

Everyone who has ever been to Venice in summer knows that during the day it’s like hell: tourists, Chinese, red-hot stones, and heat up to about 5 pm.

So there you are, fed up with all this running around on an “art” kick’ and sweating like a pig. You’ve got nowhere to go but sraightly back to the hotel.

What’s worse, all the canteens have a standard dull menu: mineral water, watermelon, ice cream.

So, looks like the guy with tunnels and flower tattoos mulled it all over, figured out his target audience and set up this very place – the  “nameless hipster’s portal of freshness” ™ – right upon the “Lower Mitten” ™, in the side streets close to Salute. We couldn’t find the name anywhere: there was nothing on the façade, nor anywhere near the place. Probably, the guy just didn’t think about it: after all, he’s a hipster, the only thing he’s got time for is smoothies.

The place is tiny like a pencil case and immediately takes you away from Venice to something like a New York phytobar, may God forgive me.

Everything’s in there (c): great fresh juice mixes, smoothies, damn it, ice cream and sorbets, cold coffee drinks (in Starbucks they just call it “coffee”), tasty juices in bottles, beer/prosecco/aperol, and some simple food.

The same is the design: it’s like you aren’t in Venice at all, there’re straight anglers and slate board – a teleportation machine.

Besides, they have the rarest thing for the Serenissima – good wi-fi for free. And since the place’s located 100 meters away from the tourist path (and the Tourist always moves down a planned route, like NPC in games) – there’re almost no people there.

They also serve some simple sandwiches/sausages (fortunately, the place isn’t vegan), but that isn’t the main thing.

The main thing is the air conditioner, half emptiness, silence (only the juicer buzzes), the view on the red-hot square and the cold tasty mixture of orange, fennel and pear under a foam hat in your glass. They have around a dozen mixtures like that there.

Just do not tell anyone, shhh!

There are ghost towns in this world. The wells of radial energies come to the surface there. All kinds of evil spirits give birth there. Well, people say that different things happen there. Yet you should not think about it much. Because you can go crazy.

 People say that more often it breaks through the walls of the old monastery at Trubnaya metro station. Weirdos lived there at the times of great distemper: warlocks, alchemists, and puffy midwives. The first ones were drowned in the basement, the second ones were taken to penal servitude, because science was not respected and was considered as a witchcraft. It was very long time ago. And the history is dark.

A woman appeared at the walls of that monastery. Well, not a woman at all, she was a mermaid. People say that she is from the well of that monastery. She kept on swimming there inveigling trustful priests. Yet, recently she did get bored with that too. And she decided to open a small tavern, using her fish ties and feed with same fish. And she did give a strange name to it. “Shell Yes”…

If you are into fairy tales and riddles with parables when you should go straight to Andersen and Bazhenov. Because from this point, as expected from me, I will talk about the gastronomy and there is no way back.

The mermaid here is Lera Golovanova. The spells evaporate and everything will find its smell and taste.

If you like fish, yet in La Mare it’s too much for you, and you do prefer small forms of “a le mollusks inn, oysters inn“ and same kind. Then you should go to Lera’s house bravely. The 70-meter corner restaurant’s got an extensive selection of fish and the counter’s running out of the fish constantly. It does hold the menu with classics like pasta la mare and soups. Yet, connoisseurs go here, of course, for the changing range of the fish market on a daily basics and for the hostess itself – always with high heels and a glass of prosecco.

All day long, here in this tiny kitchen, chefs rustle fresh mussels in their pots. They make thick broths from the heads and even make bisque themselves, not trusting concentrates and ready made sauces. At its best — slow food as it is.

They do work past the midnight. They feed until two in the morning and shed a generous wine card from Basov, full of unexpected and fairly budget type positions, generally they are open up to the last client.

In the end, if you want to hustle in the evening at the micro bar, waiting for crabs or fillets of sea angler – there is no better place to be found for that. And what to look for? In the good you are not looking for the good.