Moscow Nights, Russian Restaurant

Murray Avenue, near Forbes, Squirrel Hill.

Four of us went on a Thursday night. At 6:30pm, the restaurant was about ½ full. The atmosphere is umm... unusual. The restaurant's sign, and menu cover is a digital photo montage of erm... Russian stuff. It resembles nothing so much as a cigarette ad. Inside, the walls are covered with a floral print, which had led me to suspect, before the restaurant opened, that it would be a Laura Ashley store, or perhaps a Victoria's secret. In anycase, we liked the déor. Service was prompt, although our waiter seemed not entirely comfortable in English (which almost led to an ugly incident over Borscht). This is probably a good sign thing.

Dishes sampled

Appetisers (entrées)

  • Tashkent salad: Minced beetroot, plums and mayonaisse. This dish was rather disappointing. What flavour the beetroot may have had seemed to have been completely adsorbed by the mayonnaisse. Perhaps that's how it's supposed to taste, in which case, in future I'll order the...
  • Azerbaijan Salad: Aubergine (eggplant), tomato, oil etc. This dish was very good, and reminiscent of an Italian carbonata (sp?).
  • Ukranian Borscht: Appeared a little pale but tasted quite good. A generous helping acompanied with lashings of sour cream.
  • Sprats: The presentation was very attractive, and as sprats go, these were pretty good, especially when wedged between sufficient amounts of black bread (which is clearly not made on the premised, and which was not very good at all. It looks suspiciously as if it might have been purchased from the Giant Eagle) tomato and cucumber... Look, the bottom line is that we discovered that none of us much cares for sprats.
  • Smoked Herring: Redolant of all things marine, this dish was eaten with gusto by only one member of our party, and she didn't finish it. See
  • Mains


    This review ©1993 Michael Witbrock
    witbrock@cs.cmu.edu