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St. Petersburg- Favorite food experiences

We're looking for cafes, restaurants, bakeries and other food suuestions for St. Petersburg. Thanks!

Posted by
4137 posts

We found two great places quite near our hotel , and often , in the case of the supermarket , brought dinner back to our hotel room . In the Nevsky Center ( Mall ) The Obed Bufet , and in the lower level of the Stockmann ( CtokmaHH ) Department Store , a first rate gourmet quality supermarket . I think you will be very pleased , with both , quality and price were excellent . https://www.google.com/maps/place/OBEDBUFET/@59.9321318,30.3582644,17.5z/data=!3m1!5s0x469631a4bd2688c3:0x2f7429b91cb388f9!4m5!3m4!1s0x469631a4bf791f8d:0x1b132c79306f6705!8m2!3d59.9324296!4d30.3595829 These are both in the same building on Nevsky , next to Ploschad Vosstaniya

Posted by
12040 posts

Borscht, wonderful, delicious, borscht! Everytime I had it in St. Petersburg it was wonderful. Just about any restaurant will serve it.

Posted by
444 posts

I loved Georgian food. I don't quite remember the names of the places I went to, but it was invariably a hit rather than miss. You could just look up грузинский ресторан Санкт-Петербург on Google and go from there. I remember some places looked somewhat dodgy, but the food was always great with a capital G.

Posted by
787 posts

Although it's been a gew years since I visited St. Petersburg, here are a few places we enjoyed:

Bushe is a cafe/bakery:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g298507-d1749440-Reviews-Bushe-St_Petersburg_Northwestern_District.html

Cat Cafe is a Georgian restaurant:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g298507-d2265489-Reviews-Cat_Cafe-St_Petersburg_Northwestern_District.html

Chainaya Lozhka ("teaspoon") is more a fast-food type of place serving tea, coffee, salads, etc. We went there a couple of times for crepes/blinis:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g298507-d825552-Reviews-Chainaya_Lozhka-St_Petersburg_Northwestern_District.html

Khinkalnaya-Khachapurnaya is another Georgian restaurant, which I found via the NY Times article pasted below:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g298507-d4431401-Reviews-Khinkalnaya_khachapurnaya-St_Petersburg_Northwestern_District.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/travel/13hours.html

Posted by
2047 posts

Thank you, all, for the suggestions. We loved Georgian food and blinis especially. My husband is excited to try the bufet too.

Posted by
7981 posts

We loved Georgian food and went to a couple of places near our apartment which was near the Kazan Cathedral. Know that hotel concierges, useful for arranging transport and such, invariably send people to expensive touristy restaurants. So just striking out and finding your own places is best. Can't recall the names but there were several in this area.

A place we loved was the Cafe Rubinstein -- We had a vegetarian friend with us who really loved that she was able to eat well here. It has a lovely ambience and we ate well here several times.

Posted by
8 posts

I can attest to Bushe - in fact the founder/owner of the chain was once a student of mine when I was teaching English there years ago. The marketing director is still a close personal friend of my wife's too, and we always love when she came to visit us she'd always bring a huge cake. Their website shows a lot more locations around the center than I remember too, so that's good. Here's the link: http://bushe.ru/addresses/

If you want to be sure that you're enjoying every food experience when you dine out, regardless of the cuisine, and aren't worried too much about price or finding that perfect "hole in the wall," then I'd suggest looking at the various Ginza Project restaurants around St. Pete. Ginza is a company that owns/operates very popular restaurants around Russia (even in NY there are a few now I think). They pride themselves on experience and quality, though can also sometimes have an "elitist" atmosphere around them, but they're not over-the-top (case in point, my family ate at these places and we weren't rich). Only one of the restaurants is actually called Ginza though, and I don't recommend going there unless you want to see rich old businessmen take their model girlfriends out to dinner. The full list in English is on their website here: http://en.ginza.ru/spb ...Baklazhan is southern Russian cuisine and right in the center. I also loved Mamalyga (Georgian, but a bit of a drive) and Plushkin (more Russian/European and an even further drive). There are several centrally-located options if you browse the list.

For a truly elite and delicious dining experience, head to St. Petersburg's island of the rich - Krestovsky Island - and eat at Il Lago dei Cigni. Owned by Dmitry Pavlovich Mikhalchenko, one of the city's most influential businessmen who is now sitting in jail on (well-earned) corruption charges. His restaurants are great though, and Krestovsky Island is actually a beautiful place to walk around too, with lakes and parks (and its own metro stop for easy access) and an amusement park that has shamelessly stolen Disney's famous font for its own brand )) - The island also happens to be where they build the most expensive apartment complexes, which makes it a cool area to check out that's not on most people's tourist checklist.

Sorry for the long reply - but some good suggestions here for a delicious (non-touristy) experience.

Posted by
1 posts

What I can really recommend to feel like local - pelmeniya - nice cosy , chose please khinksli - yummy :-) especially fried :)