After walking away from the Kremlin on my last day, I found restaurant Academiya. And it was not easy finding something good in that neighborhood at first, I walked for 2 hours to find something that fits my needs… this was it:
Being a warm day for Moscow, with 22 degrees, it was perfect to get a nice table outside. Not everybody spoke fluent English, but who does nowadays…? They brought a big menu that I will describe as fusion, or more as not having a clear vision on what to serve, or maybe just something on there for everybody. Going from sushi to curry, from steak to Russian herring, risotto or pizza and so on. Easily over 100 things to choose from.
First the drinks, also like 100+ options, finally me and my table partner went for something new and unknown. I had a home made non alcoholic cocktail of physalis and ginger and carrot, something like that, and my partner had a green tea-mint-pear-honey kind of thing. Very fresh, not cheap, but worth it’s money. New, different nice presented great drinks !!!
With this we had a starter, I had a Russian salad and yeah I know it, Russian salad in Russia is asking for trouble….Funny thing is it looked exactly the same as what we buy in the supermarket. Clean cut “brunoise” of carrot, potato, cucumber, egg together with peas and mayonnaise Strange enough it tasted the same as well, so either the make a good copy in the supermarket, or they just bough it form there…. it simply was bad, sour and dry 😦
My table partner hit the bulls-eye with a perfect sushi with a Avocado-maki roll. perfectly rolled and very very fresh! Glad I got to eat some from that plate as well…
After this came a main course which was a regular steak with a wild berry mushroom sauce, bit odd, but good as a sauce. Unfortunately the quality of the meat was not so good. It was cooked very properly it only was a cheap part of the beast which made it stringy and tough to crack, too bad with that sauce. On the side was a dry salad and frozen french fries, missed chance! I did not take a picture because we all know how a steak looks like…
In the end, some great stuff and some terrible as well, maybe that’s what happens when you want to serve so many different dishes? And with a price of €80, it was very expensive and at the same time typical Moscow price.
Overall score: 6,5/10
Worlds Best Food Blog 