A huge bit of the restaurant levitates above the sea, on some old gray stilts, sort of cracked palisade surrounded by some houses like some kind of stations. It reminds me of  “Moving Castle”. Apparently, tides are high here.

We go upstairs. Second floor. Tables are covered with tablecloths …. Hmm.

There’s a happy-looking dog running along the beach. He has stolen a big fish from somewhere and the tail of the fish is swaying and slapping the dog’s body in the rhythm of the dog’s unhurried run.

The seagulls.

The menu is like a Großbuch. It has pictures on 20 pages and it’s bursting with variety.

Shrimps, then other shrimps, then again another shrimps, rock lobster, lobster, squid/fish/seashells.

Everything is the same as everywhere except for one thing – (almost) everything is properly cooked.

Let’s start with the dish that usually brings me to tears – but here it’s a fucking awesome squid, in vinegar-garlic sauce,  it could be their signature dish. Elastic, not rubbery, juicy, exactly the squid/squid, the squidest™ squid, the squid of the squids.

Then comes an absolutely non-human crab curry. OK, fuck the crab, the little crabs are good just to mess around with them wasting your time, nothing more. But I’m talking about the curry! For this yellow foam/liquid I can give a lot.

And honestly, their old school tom yam isn’t bad at all – served in a “saucepan” on the hissing burner. Scoop it with a ladle right out there, as much as you want, and end up with a heap of my favorite oyster mushrooms.

Pretty nice signature prawns. And I am astonished with the leaves around them because they are even nicer. Like really the leaves to remember. Remarkable!

Yet unfortunately, it’s not spicy at all, but now it seems like this tendency will remain in Thai forever.

Grill… Oh well, their Thai grill is more or less crap everywhere. They just can’t do it, it’s all overcooked. In this place 2 out of 5 dishes were overcooked. Just don’t go for the grill. I’ve tried just because of you, just to test it.

As for the dessert – a tray of enchanting pomelo. What else could you wish for?

Overall, a pretty decent place for lunch and the price tag is fairly low.  Because you do have plenty of fancy restaurants in Hua Hin, where you would wear something like floor-length dress, cameo and bracelets.

Thai is no longer the same, oh yeah, champignons have sneaked into tom yam and – how terrible! – there sometimes can be just one orphan shrimp floating in it. In regular places the assortment of dishes has shriveled down to the tourist set, and the tourist, as everyone knows, eats practically everything, but it should always be something familiar.

Indeed, it’s true, but not for every place.

I’ve always madly loved this restaurant in the basement of a “shopping mall”. Well, sort of a special shopping mall… There’s “Club 21” on top, which always used to be pretty decent and which now will easily outclass the Milanese “10 Corso Como”, especially after the latter was crippled by some skillful marketing-hipsters. Besides, the shops there aren’t all that simple, including Comme de Garҫons and Lanvin. The “food court” below does correspond with the overall spirit quite well.

I stop by, let me count, yeah – for exactly 10 years.

The only thing that is spoiled by tourists: everything’s by default not spicy. People just get their business lunch and are on the leash of this weak-ass trend, so do ask for it to be more spicy. Anyhow, welcome!

Of course, you don’t come here for a serious dinner, but it’s perfect for a super lunch. If you happen to be in the city center, it’s a must.

The menu’s huge and includes really a lot of Thai food, except for the Northern part of it (it’s a separate story). The food’s great!

That means, they have oyster mushrooms exactly where they should be, and these explosive green not-yet-proper tomatoes, and soft shell crabs with garlic and yellow carry (and 8 more variants of this dish), which are fucking delicious. I remember myself crying when I, for the first time in my life, bit off half of the crab in scales and husks with “blueberry sauce”, as it seemed to me back then. Everything still remains that way.

Juices – not only tangerine, but also guava, watermelon, maracuya, etc. Emerald chicken’s a “wow”, crabs are thick, fleshy and elastic unlike the usual gutless blots.

Of course, curry, 15 types, each better than another; if you’re having duck, then you get it with litchi and pineapple – no other way.

Overall, everything’s in accordance with our highest standards.

10 years in a row means quite a long time, so there’s hope it won’t get spoiled eventually.

Do enjoy!

I’ll start from afar: it’s late on the morning of January 1… and you’ve survived, but somehow remained in Moscow and now you’re not feeling that well.

Or.

You’ve got some hungry guests at night, and there’s only Prosecco in your fridge.

Or.

You’re starving during the night but the very idea of places like Yakitoriya is only making you feel all suicidal.

It’s been a long time since Gallery ceased to exist and quite a while since the sluts, which used to wander around the city hanging out in Vogue and places alike, were waiting for millionaires in there. Just like the great author said

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

It’s all about the subject of the present article, namely, the delivery from the restaurant Gallery,

which on its own doesn’t exist any longer.

There has been a gastro revolution in Moscow. Indeed, now even Yakitoriya wraps just like Gucci.

There’re plenty of places that deliver. Yes, yes, yes…

Yet there’s a nuance.

 Everything that is delivered, ok, 95% of it is impossible to eat. (But not to be confused with

literally inedible stuff ™).

Of course, we still have oriental deliveries™ like Madame Wong, which would bring you some tasty food with greater or lesser success, but only if you live in the Sadovoye Ring and the wind is northwest and the moon is in the third quarter and there you’re supposed to wait for a hipster on bike to get your delivery in 2 hours 55 minutes strictly on weekdays before 21-00. It will consist only of this restaurant’s menu, which means that if you suddenly long for sushi rolls, pickles, penne arrabiata, patties, tom yam, and okroshka at the same time – you won’t get shit.

But what about a 24/7 delivery service that will bring you your food in an hour and a half and, actually, it will be good food starting from rolls up to panna cotta in a glass, and borscht, and rabbit patties with lingonberry mors as well?? Anywhere you wish?? And like really tasty??

No way!

Yet there is such a service, indeed! And it’ll definitely be damn good!

Our benefactor Arkadii Anatolievich created Gallery in the image and likeness of Vogue Café with all those wild strawberry pies, borscht/patties, sluts and horses. Fortunately, all that high poshness of the 2000s still remains, though they obviously don’t deliver any sluts there.

Of course, there’re some “local excesses” like chili sea bass – a piece for $70! – but I take it for a sort of a gastro-joke. My greetings to all those who used to book tables at Diaghilev for $265.

All the other stuff is more than fine: fucking awesome cold borsht/okroshka/vinegret/Olivier salad –  $8, Rigatoni Carbonara – $12, huge seafood pasta with tomato sauce – $22, rice with beef – $12, chicken – $17, duck confit – $15, chicken Kiev – $13, Philadelphia – $18.

And – oh, geez – potato with mushrooms.

No doubt, this is not for free. But it’s delicious and you actually can eat it after you get it out of the package. No need to throw it away just after you taste it.

Do enjoy!

There is a phenomenon of beach clubs In Saint-Tropez. As the legend has it, this one was exactly one of the first and it was born accidentally, when the crew of Roger Vadim was filming “And God created woman” right here on the beach and asked some fishermen to sell them fish and to cook it. The owner gave the filmmakers some vegetables from her garden, I’m almost sure they were local beef’s heart tomatoes, sweet pepper and green onions. She also boiled some eggs, cut bread, took out a jar of oil, fried sardines in the pan and threw a bottle of house rose on the filmmakers’ table. They ate and drank right there by the hut, under a tree on the beach. Then the filmmakers would come back again and again. Then there appeared tourists, and the fisher woman figured out that keeping a tavern was quite profitable and gave up fishing.

Now there are more tables, the choice of food and wines has increased, the former fishing house has become the kitchen, the backyard is now a parking lot, and the son of that woman, whose name is Patrice, now runs the establishment. By the way, there’s a good story and at the same time an important life hack about Patrice and my good friend Andrey Fomin. If you call there in August and try to book a table for the same day, it’s more than likely that they’ll turn you down. But if there are just two or three of you and you just show up there before 13-00 and hand a 20 to a waiter, this way you’ll get a table. And this is what Fomin used to do for many years in row. Taking Patrice for one of the waiters, he would give him a bribe in the form of a 20 and get a table. Patrice in his turn would take the “blue one” with joy and without embarrassment and give a table.

55 has its own rules, which create its particular atmosphere. The rules are simple: no music, no dancing, no assholes like jugglers scrounging around the tables, no Ukrainian models demonstrating any trashy swimwear. The menu never changes and “never” here means “absolutely never”. The core of the menu was formed about 50 years ago and it has a collar of 15-18 dishes of the day. They daily serve three dishes of the day. The concept of food is all about that stuff that the woman used to give to the filmmakers, but brought to a higher level. A higher level, in a good sense.

At 55 no one shows off and there are no people who sit down there and say: “come on, fucking entertain me”. People who come there are as a rule self-contained and calm and don’t have the habit of pouring champagne on each other. The staff, hearing Russian speech, doesn’t try to push you Dom Perignon Rose Magnum. Disgusting slaughterhouses like Nikki Beach, Bagatelle, Les Palmiers, Shellona, etc., have totally overthrown the essence of Saint Tropez and its traditions. The idea was to break away from the Mordor of Monaco, Cap-Ferrat and other Caps, and at last gain some freedom and simplicity on the sandy beaches. But in reality they’ve just built petting zoos all around. You can and even should visit them once, but it’s impossible to stay there for a long time because of the abundance of audio-visual noise.

Let’s get back to food. After you take a seat, they immediately throw some grilled homemade bread and butter with ice on your table. Then you should always ask for a basket of fresh vegetables. Exactly those from the woman’s garden, with boiled eggs. A basket for two people kills 6 grown-up eaters at once, a basket for 4 kicks out of the game a table of 10 grown-ups and kids. It took me a long while to get why these vegetables are so tasty. It turned out that they have a huge garden, so they don’t store vegetables but immediately put them on the table. After the basket you start thinking – “why the hell did we even order all that?” – but they bring you appetizers: boiled artichokes, baked sweet pepper with anchovies, onion cake (sort of ingenious quiche with onions), deep-fried small fish, mussels in wine and sardines. We drink local branded Cuve 55, rose and white. We’re dying, but then we get a second breath. It’s common courtesy to have a big fish for everybody as the main course. I’m sincerely sorry for those people who don’t eat fish, they can have meat in the form of steak with pepper or beefsteak with egg.

There isn’t much meat here. And they don’t serve fucking scallops, neither burrata with tomatoes, nor pasta with truffle and no risotto with saffron. Those aren’t local stuff.

I almost forgot the most important thing: when you sit down at the table, ask them to put aside for you the desired number of portions of their signature cake with red berries, it comes to an end pretty quick. And it’s important to know that in 55 you can’t reserve a table for a certain hour, there are only two options: for 13-00 and for 15-00, nothing in between or after. And the last life hack: you’ll have to wait for about an hour or an hour and a half for a big fish for 5-6 people, it takes a long time to prepare it. And they never warn.

One more thing: there’s a special zone in the corner where people sit by a concrete wall. There are only small tables for 2-4 people there. This is the most VIP space, which is usually taken by some old men who have been coming to 55 for many and many years in a row. I used to know David Hamilton, a half-forgotten British photographer, he committed suicide in Paris at the age of 80 last autumn, whether because of loneliness, or illness, or he simply ran out of money and fell on evil days. So he used to spend each summer in Saint Tropez and he would come each day to 55 during the last forty-five years. There are about 5 more such old men and they always stick to the wall, each of them has a glass of red and “plat de jour”, and so they sit there staring at the visitors.

A beautiful medieval town, where Castelas Olive Oil, the best in universe, is produced. Vineyards and olive trees are all around. It is the oecumene of Provencal cooking: everything’s local and everywhere there’re traditions, own rules and tastes. I think that the most honest and edible part of the French gastronomic tradition dwells here.

The concierge advised me to visit a restaurant with a simple name of Auberge Saint-Rémy de Provence. I trusted the concierge, but when I checked up on it, turned out that the chef is a woman – not just any woman, but the winner of a national culinary TV show, and that the pastry chef is a young guy, the absolute-fucking-champion of a pastry TV show. And then, I felt a bit nervous.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the culinary genius of women, but the kitchen of a restaurant is a brutal slaughterhouse, where infernal manual labor is perfectly combined with inhuman working conditions: it’s always hot, noisy and crowded there. It’s all about screams, tension, tempo, theft, negligence, conflicts, and there are a lot of sharp corners of stainless steel all around, eternally greasy floors, lots of fire, and each participant of a conflict holds a large forged knife in his hand. It’s difficult for a woman to succeed in such conditions.

Once out of blunder I really got myself into a mess because of a female chef. Victor Ravdive, my partner from Latvia, the main and best restaurateur of the entire Baltic region, and I were searching for a chef to restart our ruined Jūrmala project with a moron name of Philippe, where local Latvians tried to feed the Jūrmalan summer residents with high gastronomy, which no one fucking wants there. So people would come and spend two hours in the restaurant, watching the turrets of the queer-like plated courses, and never come back. The guys who ran the project didn’t believe in their failure for two years and were running up a debt until they went bust and we beat the hell out of them, so they had to go to pledge their organs (otherwise they’d struggle bravely for another two years). I convinced my partners that we should have organized a homey and slightly nostalgic cuisine. We came up with a new name “Memories”, which was in accordance with local country naming. We found a chef with the Lord’s help and assistance of a Moscow agency, which bears the same name as a certain fruit (the ones off topic, won’t get it). The chef was a female and she wrote a menu, which really hit the spot; the degustation led by her wasn’t bad at all too. My friend Lesha Gubkin who used to be her employer, told us that this woman, Tatiana B., was a binge drinking monster, and that if we wanted to ruin the project, we should have urgently given her the job. Naturally, we decided that Lesha was just a dickhead and bungler in the field of personnel management, in contrast with us, who were very much not so. Being on a leash held by this monster, we bought some equipment, special utensils, paid the agency part of the fee. And then, right before presenting the menu, Tatiana lost control of herself, called all our numbers, spatting out curses at us (alcoholic paranoia attack), and disappeared from the horizon a month before the opening. So, for me a chef and a woman are different things; if a woman became a chef, one’d better look for a flaw.

I do believe in female pastry-cook. They are segregated from the “contact zoo” of the kitchen because it’s a separate department. Their work is exact and tedious, which is more suitable for women than for men, their places usually have better ventilation and they just make desserts, hand them over into the menagerie and get the fuck out through a hole in the floor.

In Auberge Saint-Rémy de Provence everything is as it shouldn’t be: their chef is a woman and the pastry cook is a man. We decide to take a risk. The restaurant is fancy, it has its own courtyard, peculiar tablecloths and the food’s beautifully plated – a truest restaurant of restaurants. They welcome you and have you seated, then the aperitifs come, sommelier, the menu – you can see marks of high quality in each detail. The female chef comes out, a live human being, quite beautiful and too subtle for such an infernal job, she extends her strong, narrow paw to shake hands with guests. It’s amazing!

The menu is rather small as it’s customary in “branded” French restaurants. We get the appetizers – vegetables from the garden, petits farcis. (Those are Provencal stuffed tomatoes, zucchini and peppers, an incredible dish, which can’t be bad, I recommend. I think that those who don’t make good petits farcis in Provence are immediately condemned to 5 years in prison – what else can explain that – I have never had it badly cooked.) We also had black caviar a la Provence. All food is very delicate, multilayered in respect of tastes and textures. The dish “Vegetables from the garden”: some vegetables are slightly baked, some are slightly boiled, some are raw; they’re sophisticatedly served, but that doesn’t look unnecessarily queer or pretentious. “Petit farsis”, I’ve never had a better one. Really, half the time I couldn’t understand the technology behind the cooking process, how is that she achieves such textures and tastes.

The main courses are Dover sole and blue lobster. I have to say that the lobster is better than the sole. Again everything’s in laces, multilayered, there’re lots of sauces and textures. It’s especially complicated with lobster, I couldn’t even understand what the pasta was made of, but obviously not of flour. At the same time there’re no excessive whims, everything’s organic and natural. The hackneyed expression “it’s melting in your mouth” is perfectly applicable in this case. The cuisine is very girlish, very delicate, lacy, light. You can tell that a straight-A student slaved over every little thing; a male chef would never be able to even plate it as she does. He’d just knock it off the table, right with his elbow, and say “I don’t give a shit”. He’d do everything much more decidedly.

Desserts are delicious; they all are mousses, turrets, curls, sauces and gravies. We ordered their four signature desserts for the four of us, and I didn’t have enough time to take a picture of them as they were immediately wolfed down. I can’t remember a single detail of any dessert, I can’t even recall the taste. The pastry cook tried to show off too hard. It would be way tastier (to my taste) if he just went for some classy apple tart tatin or any other simple yet perfect dessert. He is most evidently capable of creating desserts that are simple and perfect at the same time, but he just went too far playing with all those mousses and turrets.

Anyway, guys, you really should visit the place. The female chef Fanny Rey is a sort of a marvel!

It is located in a village, though the address is Arles, Provence. Still it’s in a village in the middle of the fields, there’s absolutely nothing around and it’ll take about 15 minutes by car to get to the nearest town. This restaurant is worth visiting Provence, and Arles, and even the whole France.

It was Nika Belotserkovskaya who made this place known among the Russian world.  She used to bring her forever drunk students from the culinary school here and write about the chef in her blog and her many books.

The restaurant has its own house, garden, and shop. Chef Armand Arnal, a young and tough country man, runs the business. He’s a smartass genius. He writes books and receives students from culinary schools from all over the world, but he lies in all his recipes and does it on purpose. It’s impossible to recreate anything according to his books, do keep this in mind.

He cooks only seasonal vegetables. His menu resembles an agricultural calendar. All the food comes directly from the garden. There’re no refrigerators. The dishes usually consist of 2-3 ingredients, there’s nothing complicatedly compound there. A piece of cucumber, a piece of tuna, a leaf of herb from the garden create an explosion. I don’t understand how one can achieve such tastes by such simple means.

No need to think. You just come there and they offer you some version of the menu. In fact, it’s all about choosing the main course. It can be fish or meat, the rest is out of options, because in the kitchen (and not in the refrigerator) they have exclusively stuff that was born in the garden today (not yesterday!!! THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!). You’ll get soup, two appetizers, main course and dessert.

I had cold cream-soup with white beans, tuna tartare, a giant baked tomato, then turbot local rice and a dessert. I’ll tell you how it goes. They just take a giant bull’s heart tomato and bake it. Then they throw on top three types of leaves on its top, bring it to your table and cut it into pieces right in front of you. Probably, this tomato is the best of all I’ve had this summer. It’s pointless to describe the dishes or the way they were plated. Absolutely pointless. Turbot simply means fish from the oven: on top of it there are some tomatoes sliced in circles and it’s all baked this way. That’s it.

Arnal has almost no portioned main dishes, as his main dishes are a large piece of meat or an entire fish. The chef himself comes out to serve. As he was serving us, he accidentally dropped fish onto the table instead of the plate and spat out curses. Guests don’t intimidate him – all good, it all about the 3 second rule. Overall, it’s an honest, true and authentic place. Guys, you should visit, you’ll remember it for the rest of your life and will have a good story to tell your friends.