I rarely go to teppanyaki. Normally I do it upon a request of a young vis-à-vis of mine; because it’s not about food, it’s just about fun.

We choose a fucking awesome view, location, delicacies, and cook on a griddle with fountains of fire and some stunning overthrows/overturns, almost with clowns: it’s great as a romantic adventure, but not as a dinner.

Though in here “everything is different”™. And that’s already a custom in our type of places.

This is an “adult teppanyaki” place: a blind basement, no windows, and a counter for about 8 people maximum. It’s usually overbooked. Zero view. You can remove foie gras from the set and replace it by a complicated soup (though we kept it). They don’t push you A5 beef for crazy money and you can easily stick to A4.

We had a seasonal set for 15 000 Yen (~ $135), which I should immediately say, was more than enough, and the Japanese merlot (!). To the honor of the establishment, besides the expensive French watery vagabond wine, the menu has also my new love – Slovenia and, for instance, lots from the New World.

Okay, here we go!

Snacks immediately tune you in: a thin slice of beef with some kind of herb sauce, fish, lobster. The rich variety of stuff on the side looks strikingly unusual for teppaniyaki – there’re sauces/additives, slices of root crops – and this is nice.

Further on everything is simple and tasty.

No throwing in the air and juggling with produce, no pyrotechnics and demonstrations of meat/lobster as they used to do it with a bottle of champagne in the 2000s, bringing it through the hall with Bengal lights. Only once did the chef light cognac on beef for a split of second and that was it – quiet, almost invisible cooking.

The foie gras was a nice surprise: instead of bread it came on a sort of latka made with either sweet potato or just the regular one. It perfectly equalized the taste, absorbing the extra “oil” in the liver and highlighting the hues.

The lobster was excellent. It was with drops of various sauces and shavings of fresh vegetables.

Also there were noodles in an absolutely great broth.

And a nano-dessert: grapes in jelly and chestnut ice cream.

Perhaps the most faded item was the marbled beef sushi with urchins. But I guess it’s because I prefer to have it in the “holes in the wall” at Ginza where it’s fat like my mom’s dumplings, and uni is flowing down from it along your lips.

Overall, it’s a great place!

Do enjoy.

There is nothing to do in this place. In the town, I mean.

And when I say ‘nothing’, it means ‘ABSOLUTELY nothing’. Here beautiful Japan is turned not even into Venice (which is also beautiful), but into Venice hotel in Vegas. As soon as the stores are open, a crowd of kimono-wearing people gather along the channel; boat-men put moron-tourists™ into the boats, respectively, throw on them what they call “ancient Japanese hats” and float down the channel in a straight line from one gateway to another.

There are some sort of rickshaws in the “ancient style”, carriages/carts, musicians and other fucking whoredom™ everywhere.

The crowd partly consists of old men/women with rolexes/pearls, who at their last gasp decided to get cultural in the Land of the Rising Sun, to join in, so to speak.

Overall, it’s an infernal trash™.

But if you happen to be there, you need to have something to eat, don’t you?

And there’s this ryokan. It’s absolutely useless on its own. $1000+ per day for hell knows what. Maybe it’s because of the address: the local variant of “Red Square 1”, written right there at the channel in the thick of it – with all bells and whistles.

But there is a nuance.

As it should be, they serve kaiseki for dinner there, in the ryokan – officially, they’ve got 7 courses, but each one consists of a heap of micro-event (take a look at the menu).

They serve it for only 15 000 Yen (about $135). Most importantly, it’s all tasty from beginning to end and, what is more, is completely comprehensible for ordinary people.

Not everyone will dare to eat traditional Japanese kaiseki because, despite all the beauty of the event, one can easily hit upon something like a “fish feet compote” or “roast fishbones”™, for which my mother has been reproaching me for a whole year already.

It’s different in here.

Rather everything’s beautiful and strictly seasonal. No one will serve you green soup in autumn or an orange one in spring, heaven forbid. Everything is also clear and tasty in here. Apparently, the level of authenticity is abruptly tightened for baka gaijins.

We come in.

We wander through sort of alleys: to the left, then to the right, then past a “taxidermy of a pine tree”, then through another nano-hallway leading to the sauna. The restaurant is in the hall that has a glass wall with a view to the inner court with a garden – this is beautiful.

We take a seat.

I have to admit that the only thing that justifies the ryokan’s prices is the level of service – the highest one. Even if they don’t know who you are, or if they’ve known you’re here just for three minutes, or if they understand you’ll never come back, there’ll be a feeling that shōgun has arrived and that shōgun is you.

All the food is in the pictures. Again, it’s all tasty: sashimi is of incredible quality, you won’t be able to find something like that even in conventional sushi shops at Tsukiji but only in the secret spots. There’s wagyu, sea bass, crab – a little bit of everything, just to try, with additives and sauces.

This is a truly great night.

Well, afterwards you can go out to the empty channel. The buses took the daytime crowd away to the suburbs. The luxury old ladies are fast asleep in their over luxury hotels. And you can breathe and watch the town with no people, and it will be beautiful and true.

Do enjoy.

I love Anatoly Komm’s food. I’ve always loved it. And I guess I’ll go on with it.

And I don’t give a fuck if someone doesn’t like him or the food he cooks.

I’ll be brief. This is what I’ve waited from Komm for a long time. This is exactly what I’ve wanted – “just our best hits” (c) – gathered together from all his restaurants like Green, etc.

This is a mobile project. They say it’s here for a year. The menu changes every month: they promise 100% rotation.

Borsch, and herring under a fur coat, and the new «mussel menu«, and the super-cod – everything is in there.

Delicious, complicated, inexpensive, yet not completely for free.

Do enjoy.

Although I am in Latvia for many years already, I’ve never heard a single word, nor even a semi-word about this place.

Each year thousands of orange-yellow postcards from the autumn Sigulda fill facebook and instagram with its glossy stream, but all of them keep silent about this place.

As if they had a conspiracy against it.

Therefore, when the given “chalet” over a pond jumped out from behind a turn, and all of a sudden started to flicker on the right behind the car window, it was only my gastro-sniff-radar that sounded the alarm:

“Pull over! There’re still 3 whole hours before the plane. We’ll make it through!” it yelled wildly.

And as usual, there was no mistake.

We enter: hey there, what’s up? There’s a terem, a tall one, with no embellishment – it has a very authentic look. As they say now – it’s “craft” and immediately an anecdote about homosexuals come to the mind, but in a good sense of the word. The same is here.

Everything is fucking authentic.

Now I regret that I didn’t order tartare. I thought it’d be some trash ‘cause the menu resembled the ones in VDNKh cafes with all sorts of “salads with crayfish meat,” etc. This is a big problem – people often do so: they throw a fucking awesome restaurant, but their menu is just like from another dimension; like flowers in cellophane.

Another fact about the menu: BRAVELY share your main course, because to eat it alone is a nightmare, but not to eat it is a crime.

Further on everything was simple and at the same time spectacular.

First, the legendary Lithuanian herring with curd cheese (c) – it turned out to be a Baltic version of salmon with sour cream: curd cheese with herbs and mild-cured fish, also with some potatoes – just perfect.

Then there was a real hit, called (sorry, forgot the name) – barley with bacon in sauce and with sauce on the side.

And after that there came some crazy brutal stuff: it was nothing like the nice light cute stewing but a real anatomical theatre: hare leg the size of a chicken, corresponding boar and deer steaks + some complicated side dishes: huge black beans, all sorts of sprouts, etc.

This is the exact way of game meat serving that I’ve always been looking for: neither ragout nor nano-steak, nor some other fashionable fancy shit; but almost like the true “Three Musketeers” kind of thing à la broche.

And everything’s made super deliciously, really.

Come over and go for a walk in the park for the whole day. And then, after experiencing the autumn, or frost, or a summer sea thing – just go straight there.

About three years ago, when out of necessity I found myself in Warsaw, by mere accident I got into a restaurant located on the outskirts of a park. I don’t remember whether the star was already on top of it or no, but the restaurant itself was indeed and very much what one calls “memorable”™ and during all my next visits to Poland I always wanted to get there again. But I would never call them early enough. Booking a month in advance:

“Sorry, all weekends are reserved till November!”

That’s what they cheerfully told me in May. Ok, then it should be Monday. And, finally, two months before the other supposed one-day visit to Warsaw, I did manage to squeeze into the booking.

I was going there by taxi, watching the buildings with columns sweeping by. I was sort of getting nervous: hardly ever something engraves in my memory that indelibly. But this restaurant did. And what if it spoiled?

We come in.

Oh, well. It’s clear/understandable why you can’t book it a month in advance. It resembled a skating rink ticket booth back then and it remains so today. They can have maximum 30 people per night there. There’re more staff than guests in the frame. And one table is good for only one dinner. The “very good business” title has nothing to do with them.

We sit down.

They bring us the menu with the “moments” – that’s the name of the dishes.

Actually, a long time ago I worked out for myself a very simple model: complements determine the quality of the restaurant. If they are fucking way too elaborate and not really delicious, further on everything’s going be the same. Yet it happens sometimes that appetizers or main dishes turn out to be quite good, but it can be revealed only during a long dinner.

In this case, everything was good.

The menu absorbs the overall mood: orange milk mushrooms/milk/cabbage, aubergine/halva/bird cherry, beans/lavender/hare’s kidneys – there’re only 9 items. And there’re 6 complements according to the same principle.

The menu’s called the 42^nd week. It’s gradually being updated during the year: week after week, 6 times a year.

It’s the very first dish: flounder tartare with rowanberry, sea-buckthorn viscous mousse and grated beeswax on top like truffle – that dispels any thoughts that it’s possible to get here without a reservation one or even two months in advance during the next year.

It’s extremely talented, quiet and without much ado. The service is perfect at… 110eur!

For the entire two and half hours you bite off taste after taste, crunch and creamily flow in textures: it’s cold, then hot, then gradient; all this is endowed by some excellent accompaniment, mostly white wine that is generally little known: Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovakian, and even Polish… So, you completely forget that you’re in Warsaw, which isn’t at all famous for its gastronomy, to put it mildly.

In a posh hotel (which does occur in Poland) – dare I say it – an “exquisite”™ restaurant has happened. Just like this. With all that it implies: an intelligent menu and refined, balanced and at the same time particular, beautiful and mad tasty food.

Okay, let’s rename it to “outstanding”, cause “exquisite” ™ makes my teeth hurt.

First things first.

You come in: and “Copernicus” is just beautiful like many other “Relais & Chateaux” hotels; perhaps, a little more beautiful, almost to the point of indecency.

Actually, that’s a wake-up call for me: usually such hotels are equipped with stupid restaurants, which aren’t tasty at all though are definitely meant to be in the haute style. So what?! Yeah, really, all the on-the-top decorum isn’t capable of fulfilling your appetite.

So, we look around and there it is: the ONE is located in the atrium under the dark wood stairs and is shining with crystal, which is on display in semidarkness. There’re candles and waiters with look bored. “The ONE/ONE” we say. But it’s exactly 11 p.m., 500 km are behind us: “Ok, let’s eat what they serve us. Fuck it.”

We take a seat, and everything’s goes wrong: there’s only a set menu of 9 or 12 courses. There’s nothing like à la carte for the tired traveler, absolutely nothing – uncompromising provincial chic.

We’re in a bad mood.

Though suddenly…

“You can order everything à la carte, that’s how it works in here.”

“??”

Ok, let’s do it!

Our of despair we get something with tuna (a starter), beetroot tartare, duck, deer, soup… to share.

I usually judge whether it’s going to be tasty or not by the first complement. (What usually stops me in most Michelins places? what hope is still there after they push you that formal touristy shit? I can’t figure that out). But this spoon of cucumber soup made it all clear: “Relax, Anton! They’ll feed you pretty fucking good in here.”

To say that I was surprised by tuna with avocado and so on, wouldn’t just be an understatement. It’d be as if I whispered saying pretty much nothing upon the topic. I didn’t come that often across such tuna even at the Atlantic coast. This sort of was grossing me out. There was absolutely nothing to complain about. Then they brought us beetroot tartare with blackberries and pomegranate. Incidentally, we found out that in Poland they make excellent white wine out of “Solaris” grape variety – this is, for sure, a phantom – fucking grapes in Poland!

Then there were two tasty main dishes: deer/duck, real sous vide/grill – right as it should be according to the latest fashion among the main courses.

And after that they served “pirogi”, local al dente, absolutely goddamn delicious ravioli with sweet tomato stuffing. We had to wolf it down three times in a row. In the end, each of us got a portion.

I had tongue for dessert, which also turned out to be wildly intricate, and not just intricate, but tasty. Both rarely come together, as you know.

To my taste, the only faint item was the dessert. I just don’t like them. So, I can’t judge. There’s nothing more than «incompetence and indifference» (c) on my part there.

Do enjoy.