CIS food

Mari Vanna is a Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge, in front of the new Bulgari hotel and next to 1 Hyde Park, strategically placed, as this is an area beloved by the Russian community. Mari Vanna also has branches in New York, St Petersburg and Moscow. If you are Russian (or Russian speaking like myself) you will most likely really like this place, because it sort of reminds you of home, and most people that go there are Russian speakers or foreigners brought there by Russian speakers.  You enter and the waitresses dressed in flowery aprons speak to you in Russian (all the waiters are Russian or Russian speaking, our waitress when we went there was Latvian), and it just feels quite surreal to be surrounded by this Russian atmosphere as soon as you walk in.

“Uzbekistana” restaurant serves typical Uzbekistan cuisine, and as Latvia was part of the USSR not so long ago, there is a big influence in food that Latvians eat from various Russian and Central Asian cultures and recently there have been a lot of Central Asian restaurants opening up in Latvia which are very popular. “Uzbekistana” is very popular, which as I have mentioned before is so rare in Latvia, as most of the restaurants are quite empty in Riga due to many reasons (people can’t afford to eat out, it is not yet our culture to eat out, etc…), but “Uzbekistana” is always full of people, because the food they offer is so delicious and also reasonably priced if you like this type of food. I first heard about this place a few years ago when my friend Kristaps told me about a new restaurant that serves delicious and good value for money food and is always busy and you need to book.

Armenia restaurant as the name suggests serves Armenian food and the place is located in the centre of Riga and quite close to my dad’s apartment, so it was convenient for my dad, my brother and myself to go there for a quick meal before my flight back to London. Armenia is very similar to another restaurant located in Riga called “Uzbekistana” as both places serve Central Asian food, and the difference is that “Uzbekistana” is around 20% cheaper even though the quality of the food is the same (also despite this 20% premium Armenia would not be expensive by any standards), so people always prefer to go to “Uzbekistana” (it is very busy and you have to book) and there are less people in Armenia. If you don’t mind paying 20% more, do go to Armenia, as the food is similar in terms of quality.

I have been to Barashka twice now and I really like it. The restaurant serves Azerbaijan food and there are now 5 Barashka restaurants located in Moscow and I went to the one quite close to the red square and Barashka is one of the restaurants of the Novikov group (Mr Novikov owns many different restaurants in Moscow and as well as in London). The interior is nice, and when you enter you can either sit downstairs in the smoking area (by the entrance you can see nice sweets you can see in the picture) and on this visit I was offered a seat upstairs in the non smoking section.