The cafe/shop/yoga studio «Taste and colour» is harmoniously located in the territory of the design-factory «Flacon» and it really has an excellent taste and pleasant colour. They bring the concept of vegan & raw highly testimonial and they manage to impose their beliefs and ideals nobly and unobtrusively.

As if each dish whispers to you about its endless use for the human body humbly. All kinds of fruits and vegetables, greens and sprouts, nuts and seeds, rare cereals and legumes — all of this is gathered together in such an elegant configurations that even the notorious meat-eater / nihilist who has come to «just  sit with the company for the company’s sake» will eventually find himself, as usual, «the drunkest one in the bar», and will even wave off to catch up with his usual «something» called «I can’t live without meat».

The place is epoch-making. I first tried the perfect burger here. Two leaves of lettuce instead of bun, vegetables and kinoa/greens/magic patty inside, some magical raw bacon too and barbecue sauces, and mayonnaise, based on nuts, vegetables and spices. And, well, yes, there must be some warlock final touch by the chef (oh my god, who knows…) because it’s so delicious, when it costs you only 100 kcal for 350 rubles simultaneously. F@cking can’t be true.

I’m not the one who is full just from eating one dish (be it vegan shit or black Angus burger), so a salad of different kinds of greenery was checked too (the sauce is the bomb! kind of Japanese, sesame like and  with it’s own character), an ordinary vegan soup borscht too, yet there is a raw borscht on the menu as well, from a fresh beet-orange broth which is my next victim), vegetable rolls (wrapped in sushi nori, well just the way it should be, vegetables inside and special pasta instead of rice is the only difference), vegan syrniki no flour or sugar (probably tofu and banana from, with vegan coconut sour cream, with berries, oh gods!), vegan berry cheesecake and all sorts of superfood candies. We had some fresh drinks, coconut water, coconut/almond cappuccino. (Well, just in case, I wasn’t there on my own, so you would know)) Liked everything. I will go there again and again. The menu is large (raw pizza, lasagne, zucchini-pastas, salads, soups, dumplings, cakes, etc.). A lot of work to do.

PS: Even after Gargantua and Pantagruel type like party, «Taste and Colour» will evoke a pleasant ease in your stomach, both immediately after the meal and in the morning. Though forcing you to think, not for long, but still think … no, relax, once in a lifetime – won’t turn you to vegan. I know. what I am saying.

If you are an esthete, go to Trento. That’s all I have to tell you.

One of the most respectable families in Northern Italy has built a fantastic museum of modern art there. It was created almost entirely with their private investments and it’s packed with the works of art from their own private collection.

It’s slightly smaller in size than Guggenheim, has a huge glass dome, and knocks out everyone who dares to discuss art only from the business point of view, as well those who say that the patrons of the arts are Martians. “They don’t exist, because no one’s ever seen them”.

They do exist, gentlemen and disbelieving three-penny businessmen. I saw them and I’m acquainted with them. Thanks to all the gods and to my friends.

But I have to talk about the hospitality and the food.

Sorry. I was blown away!

When your jaws start to close again, and the museum is seen completely, it is necessary to make a very small journey and reach the house. It belongs to the second part of the same family, on account of one magnificent wedding ceremony mentioned below.

The house is turned into a resort and this is the Villa Madruzzo.

«Father wants to see you!» a graceful big-eyed beauty, Valentina Polonyoli, was shining on the eve of that epoch-making wedding, which united “the two equally respected families».

The owner, he is Battista Polonioli, welcomed me with open arms as if I was part of the family. Behind him, were a few virtual corpses of the event’s organizers lying around. He personally led the storming banquet service, organizing a pre-wedding table for 100 people, and shaking everyone’s hand so that the slightest doubt in his omnipotence was laid to rest.

Gods! If all men were like Battista Polonioli, we would already be walking among orchid gardens on Alpha Centauri. But alas and ah, there are very few men like him and we’re on Earth. It seems like for good.

There are no gigantic spaces or banquet rooms on the villa. It’s a house, a magnificent house in the olden way, carefully preserved, with ancient window sashes. There’s an age-old forest around, on the slopes of hills, and over ravines of rivers.

The villa is the realm of prosperity, created by one family and the energy of Polonioli, who doesn’t know of fatigue, as one doesn’t tire of his or her favorite work and favorite people.

In his hands, everybody is to feel themselves protected and happy. You’re attended to here, as you would be attended to at home. There are no strict rules. If you want, you can be alone and read a book in the dining room, or you can simply watch the ancient crystal wares being polished, or hang out on the steps of the main portal contemplating the modern building of the SPA with a panoramic pool in the distance. You can do whatever you like. You will be helped if you ask, or they will leave you alone to a book in an armchair and as if by accident push towards you a vase with candied fruit or mini biscotti.

Care-care-care.

Here the Michelin stars, received a couple of years ago, are nothing special. They’re taken for granted. They’re received for work and honesty. For Italy. For the restaurant.

You know what? Just book a flight to Milano, then get a small retro car. Something like Cabrio or Alfa Romeo, whatever. Put on your vis-à-vis a silk scarf. On yourself a neckerchief and a rose, it should definitely be a rose into the buttonhole. And head to Trento. You are an esthete, aren’t you?

An event, that’s what it is, the restaurant is secondary here. The whole island has learned to “chili the crab” more or less perfect.

Choose the place on your own. Maybe even an old one, touristy, on the wharf with a view, for example choose this one.

Just like this.

I’ll explain, I’m very much into the authentic-trash-places, but! only if the food destroys all the disadvantages.

In this case, it is not exactly so.

Over the years, since the time a certain restaurant invented the “chili crab”, other places have invented it too and lots of times over.

So if you go to the place ashore, where the “chili crab” was really invented, you get nothing except 30 minutes in the taxi (and back), an infernal dining room with hyper bright white lamps like in an operating room, inedible dishes beyond the “crab”, and to tell you the truth, even the crab there is not all that cool.

Moreover, everything that is served in the Singapore dining rooms with the name “traditional dish”, except the notorious crab, is more than sad.

But let’s talk about the bright sides.

On its own the chili—blackpepper—creamy crab is fucking awesome!

Despite the fact that you’ll have to get dirty from head to toe with the sauce splashing from each and every gap in the crab, it also leaves stains on your clothes, which you can’t remove well, get rid afterwards (the chili ones stay in for fucking forever). There you are, wrapped in an apron as if it was a spacesuit, deconstructing this crab with tongs like fucking metal claws.

Seems like such a pain in the ass, but still…

… still it is SO fucking good that after the wearisome half-hour fight with the crab, you gently lick the plate clean with the croutons. And you order the next crab, in some other sauce this time. What if it is even better?

By the way, our foody company by means of empirical analysis didn’t manage to determine which sauce is actually the best.

Perhaps, you could do it?

Throughout the centuries, having survived wars and plague epidemics, wiping out countries and demolishing cities, people have retained their love of wrapping all kinds of meat, fish and vegetables in flatbread.

Being that Mexico and Peru are the cradle of ancient civilization, let’s give them the credit for inventing stuffed flatbread. Let’s give it to them and not to Turks or Jews with their shawarma, nor to the Armenians with durum, but namely to South America. Perhaps it was brought to them by extraterrestrial civilizations, or perhaps they came up with it on their own.

Tacos gave birth to Taquerias, and the everlasting Manches happened on Earth.

Here in Russia, after reading this article, hundreds of unfortunate restaurateurs will rush to get dibs on the “taqueria”, as well as on other “new” names. They will have this “discovery”. It dawned on them and may God be with them. It will pass.

Meanwhile, we will enter into a simple batten shed with posters. The menu is on the wall and we will chew, with crunches behind the cheeks, 15 types of tacos, pouring upon them sauces and throwing upon them nachos with guacamole. Of course, we will greedily eat the divine quesadilla with cactus, fish, avocado and burning flowing cheese. Doesn’t matter if we get all stained. This is happiness! Having ordered everything from the menu and endowing it all with six very honest 250 ml margaritas, we paid 40 Euros for three and found ourselves in the paradise for gluttons and alcoholics. And the feeling wasn’t any worse than that after Leon’s Michelins or Paris’s New Waves. God works in mysterious ways. Hallelujah!

PS: Christian Brack Thomas showed me this tenth wonder of the world. The man who can find good food by touch in any corner of the planet. But what he’s up to is the theme of my next story.

Yes, yes, yes… “Darbar” is not what it used to be and everything.

You know what? Neither do we get younger. You long for things that were around not even in the 2010s, but in the 2000s.

You’re being nostalgic about time long before the death of “Goa” and “Maharaja”, when the very first Moscow restaurants were still alive. Oh please! That’s already remote past.

Now look around! Where are you going to have Indian food when all of a sudden you find yourself in a pinch (indeed, does happen regularly)?

In a new kind of trendy hipster shitty place for teenagers with failed taste buds? Yeah, right.

Of course, it became less authentic, etc, and no doubt that talking about Indian food outside India is like comparing warm to soft, but come on! It’s still tasty in here. There’s still static time hanging in the air, the sunset, which you can watch from both sides, is still wonderful, the prices are still good, and you get that feeling that your head is kind of spinning because of all those years that have vanished into nothing but it’s part of the show. Stay strong!

Everything is as it used to be many years ago, but now it’s like you’re watching the new season of “Twin Peaks” keeping in mind the previous one. The location is an infernal hotel with “Komsomol-security guards” behind the desk on the first floor. What’s that supposed to mean? Obviously, it isn’t a reception.

Behind them there is a turn and an elevator carries you up to the 16^th floor. Then there is a corridor, narrow stairs, a corridor again, and glass doors. Finally, you are inside. The place is unique. For such a place many Moscow restaurants would give a lot. It is a long pencil case with windows on both sides. You see both the Russian Academy of Sciences and the City, the rarest thing for Moscow!

We sit down.

The waiters, whether they’re Hindus, whether not, don’t speak Russian (at least half of them), however, they speak English and that is nice.

We ordered three curries, grilled shrimps/mutton, raita, cheese naans and saffron rice.

The only obvious problem is the grill. Kind of not their thing.

The rest, specifically the curry, for our city is perfect (please, see the first part of this article).

Riata and cheese naans are also ok.

Generally, regarding Indian food there’s not much to write about, especially if you aren’t in something like “Trishna” in Bombay. Everybody knows it’s either good or not. What we have here is the former case.

The rest is described above, do enjoy!

It is a very sad story. I swear on my mother’s soul, you will cry as a child. The entire queue for the registration cried. They cried out of laughter looking at my husband’s and my faces. What else is to say about the parents who forgot that their kid’s 3-year visa had expired??? Mallorca, Nyusha, Motyan, bays, pines… Everything collapsed into a pixel picture right at the passport control.

Anna Mongayt took the news about our not coming up stoically. She moaned slightly and cried cried a seagull. Children sobbed, my husband having clenched his teeth hissed “I’m not coming back home”, the situation was heating up, so we decided to look at the departure board.

In an hour the aircraft of the company “fly with whatever there’s” lifted our bodies into the air without promising to return them back on earth. Secretly from the child and the stewardesses we had some not-duty free sedatives from the micro bottles and reflected on “fuck it all” topic, trying to say goodbye to sunny Balearic Islands without sorrow. But we couldn’t, so finally we fell asleep.

The sun tore out our eyes at the airport of Simferopol. Where are we going?” the responsible child asked her parents. The poor girl still didn’t know that her parents when they were younger used to sleep in the dog parks in Prague and to travel to “nowhere” as if it was to “the one and only” place. “I’ll tell you in a minute,” I murmured trying to check in somewhere in Simferopol with a note “HELP!!!”

The phone rang in 15 seconds. It was Igor Kalmykov dying from laughter. “You fools, call Olya!” Indeed, we are fools. Olya Kuznetsova! Fine superb Olya and her “Onegin”, in the infinity pool of which above the breakages of Gurzuf about a hundred of our common friends had checked in not a long time ago. It is very easy to confuse “Onegin’s” views with Toscana seaside because of the abundance of rocks and cypresses, cognac’s wear off was as easy at us especially because we started to realize that the happiness was nearby, just somewhere around the corner.

Friendship creates miracles! Otherwise, how would you find a room in the peak season, without any previous notifications, in the most beautiful place on the coast? All the 40 rooms were booked so Olya gave us her “nest”, 100-meter space on the roof of the hotel. A breathtaking view…And the eternal Pinot Noir introduced to us by Kirill Grebenshchikov. Oh, the Popovs arrived! And the Berkovich, finally we get to know each other better! Cool, Akimova is here! Feldman, hey why did it take you so long to get here? Great “summer camp” where all the parents know each other and the children at once find a common language with each other. “Who’s diving for a bottle of rosé? WE DO!”

10 days passed over as a hurricane. Yachts, rocks, Artek, love and rosé on the occasion and without any. Fuzzy skin of peaches, us, and the child buried in my shoulder. Under the influence of childhood memories Pinot Noir enfolded into very special aromas. Oysters in Katsiveli. Mussels next to the road. Crimea! I don’t care about the politics. The peninsula has always been mine and it will remain the same. Childish, drunk, spontaneous.

“Next year we’re going both to Mallorca and Crimea, aren’t we?” asked Vera on the way back home. “OF COURSE”, promised the green-eyed taxi Mercedes flying over the hairpin turns towards the airport. “FOR SURE,” roared the plane turbines for only 100 Euro. “OH YEAH,” my husband and me said having spent only a quarter of Balearic budget and actually, with a great difficulty.