Category Archives: Kaliningrad bars, restaurants, cafes

Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad: It’s a Novel Experience

No need to read between the lines ….

10 November 2025 – Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad

Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Fyodor Dostoevsky — I feel a certain intimacy with either one and all of these gentlemen, not solely because I have read and admired their inimitable works, their acknowledged masterpieces, but also from the observation that these noted writers displayed a fondness to lesser and higher degrees for alcoholic beverages. That Tolstoy did not follow suit, at least by the time of 1850, when come his spiritual transformation he renounced the demon drink, could explain the reason why I am not so well acquainted either with his works or with the life of the man himself. As in matters of race and politics, people of a certain persuasion are often drawn to one another, finding comfort and cohesion in shared identities and experience.

Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad

Any prejudices that I might entertain towards temperance in general and temperate people in particular were swiftly dispelled, however, upon learning of a café in Kaliningrad bearing the name of Leo Tolstoy. Not thinking to inquire whether the said establishment had outlawed the sale of alcohol in deference to its namesake, I decided, nevertheless, that since Leo’s transformation had caused him to revise and relinquish the unnecessary primordial practice of sinking one’s teeth into flesh, whilst his denunciation of alcohol could be excused as an aberration, his conscious metamorphosis from carnivore to vegetarian proved in this particular that he could not be all that bad a chap, and, even should you not concur on this point, take stock that he wrote a book or two, and that anyone in my opinion who willingly devotes the greater percentage of their little life wrestling with the written word deserves, if nothing else, to have a café named in their honour. It does make you wonder, though, about the literary prowess of McDonald. (I know his brother; he has a farm.) We are all acquainted with the adage ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and McDonald’s, of course, are not real restaurants, but having more junk-food factories named after you than Colonel Sanders implies that Old McDonald’s bruv has to be one hell of a writer. Based on the same criteria, have you ever dined at the JK Rowling?

Tolstoy Art Café Kaliningrad: It’s a Novel Experience

Anyway, burger to thoughts of that nature, let’s first apologise to Leo and then get down to the nitty-gristle: What was it that I found and liked on my maiden voyage to the Tolstoy Café?

You might like to check out these …
Café Seagull by the Lake
Soul Garden
Patisson Markt Restaurant
Croissant Café
Premier Café Bar

I could say, and if I did, I would be perfectly wrong in doing so, that should you not be specifically looking for it, the whereabouts of Tolstoy Art Café would be impossible to miss. Komsomol’skaya Street, which is where the café is located, lies in what was in Königsberg’s time one of the city’s most prominent suburbs. The same rings true today.

Here you will find row upon row of solid, upmarket German flats, punctuated now and again with imposing municipal buildings and villas of a stately nature. Being predominantly residential, the assumption that the Tolstoy Art Café would have no great difficulty in standing out from the crowd is to court an evident misconception. Despite the oversized painted portrait of Tolstoy’s well-known visage, the building occupied by the café, being set back from the road and, during the months of summer, being partially screened by trees, could lead without deliberate scrutiny to passing the image off as the competent endeavor of—and here I am being polite — what some would call a ‘street artist’, or, if it suits your understanding better, the work of a graffiti merchant, who, having taken his paints and spray can, has adorned the wall of a uniform townhouse with a likeness of his favourite writer.

Whether I could have found the café alone, working from directions only, is a metric that cannot be tested. I knew where I was going, as I was being taken there.

Tolstoy Art Café, Kaliningrad: A Literary Retreat

Tolstoy, I am now referring to the man, the ingenious, gifted writer, is not about graffiti, nor about temperance and not liking sausages; Tolstoy is a man of letters. OK, so the letters of which we speak don’t spell “Mine’s a beer” or “Order me up a Double Big Mac”, but they’re definitely of a type that professionally and epically, and to this I will also add lavishly, fill many a page in many a book — think of War and Peace. Thus, that the theme of the Tolstoy Art Café is irrefutably bookish is not the kind of revelation that is going to blow your socks off or knock the stuffing clean away out of your Christmas turkey. There are books at Tolstoy Art Café — indeed books and books and books — but the fact that they are there — and there, and there and everywhere — is only part of the story.

Stacked in blocks and bound in string, which once was the way of doing things when preparing books for shipment, is a nice twee touch of vintage, which the café carries off well. And books to be found where they should be, stood at attention on shelves, lend the place an erudite air. Yet, it is not books in themselves, as appropriate as they are to a café named after a famous writer, that generate true novelty. It is in discovering books where you would least expect to find them and in a capacity and aesthetic arrangement hitherto unexperienced where the known ordinary surpasses itself.

I’ll try you with a clue. Tolstoy was a brilliant writer, an undisputed literary genius. His intellect and imagination seemingly knew no heights. Millions of readers around the world admire and look up to him. In his exploration of human experience and his deep moral and philosophical insights, he stands head and shoulders above many of his contemporaries.

“Tell me something new!” you say. And as your eyes roll upwards in an intended show of exasperation, now you see them where you saw them not, up there on the ceiling.

Books on the ceiling at Tolstoy Art Café in Kaliningrad

Books and volumes of them, some presenting their covers, some with opened, fluttering leaves; some pinned to the ceiling, others suspended at different heights by string; not just thrown together but creatively arranged, pre-planned, choreographed, artistically assembled.

The sight of so many books hovering above like words of wisdom placed inconveniently just out of reach is enough to make the dullest fellow want to say, as though he means it, “I do enjoy a good read, you know, though most of it is over my head.”

Whilst this is patently obvious in the room with its halo of books, Tolstoy Art Café is two rooms bookish. The second room has soft seats and books on shelves arranged traditionally, which can be taken down and read at leisure as one would do in a public library.

Tolstoy Art Café, Kaliningrad. This room is like a public library.

But don’t book now! I whisper. To get into this furthest room, you must pass beneath an arch of books, as though entering into a sacred chamber where scholarly miracles are performed.

Tolstoy Art Café. An arch of books ... — **Underneath the arches .**..

Meanwhile, in the first room, the one with the books aloft, look for the book entitled ‘Going through an identity crisis’. This refers to the room itself. Exposed brick walls with angled lamps that play with shadows and highlights trend towards industrial chic, but a plethora of retro wall plaques, framed disparate prints and the inclusion of a parlour piano tilt the impression unevenly towards a sense of sitting quietly somewhere in Tolstoy’s living room, unlike any he ever owned but fictitiously convincing enough to urge you to respect his views on abandoning meat and booze: “Just a couple of soda waters and a vegetarian sausage, please.”

Olga Hart samples novel chic at Tolstoy Art Café

Rest assured, however, that the menu is not so Tolstoy-friendly as to predispose you to any such subterfuge. If anything, it is plainly lacking in vegetarian options, as though Mrs Tolstoy is in the kitchen cooking up things she shouldn’t. The meat options may not sit well with the man who created Count Vronsky, but I have it on good authority that they are for the most part tasty dishes, reasonably priced and pluralistic.

Mercifully, the Volstead Act that Tolstoy visited upon himself is not inflicted on the eponymous café’s patrons, thus enabling me to sample, not only sample but also enjoy, a rather moreish wheat fermentation to go with my meatless pizza.

Mick Hart in Kaliningrad with wheat beer at Tolstoy Art Café

Mick Hart, beer, a piano, vintage - just how he likes it!

When I am out on the town, I’m not one who watches prices, so I cannot whisper in your lug if the fare at Tolstoy Art Café was underpriced, overpriced or just about the right price {“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom,”—so said Tolstoy himself} — but I am willing to bet my entire collection of vintage luncheon vouchers that if you are looking for somewhere different, which is also comfortable and atmospheric, a place in which to rest your bones, partake of a bite to eat, and drink a commendable coffee or (sshhh!) a beautiful bottle of beer, then, as Anna Karina once said, or was it five chapters in War and Peace, “… one must live and be happy.”

Buying happiness for 100 roubles — **Happiness costs a mere 100 roubles (less than a quid) at Tolstoy Art Café, Kaliningrad**

I am old enough to remember a time when ‘Happiness was a cigar called Hamlet”, but today, it’s a place called Tolstoy Art Café where creatives park their arts and others like to make such jokes as, “Do I need to book a table? Don’t judge it by my cover. Turn over a new leaf in your life and open a new café chapter. Bookmark my words, you’ll love it, I’m sure!

The main thing

Tolstoy Art Cafe (Art Кафе Tolstoy)
Ulitsa Komsomol’skaya, 17, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236023

Opening times
Monday to Friday: 8am to 9pm
Saturday: 10am to 9pm
Sunday: 10am to 9pm

Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad is right on track

Mick Hart’s one-track mind takes him to Art Depot

17 March 2025 ~ Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad is right on track

Of all the roles I have played, or wanted to play, I never considered myself to be a second Bruce Reynolds. But here I was, about to pull off in my mind the world’s Second Great Train Robbery.

Everything was set; planned to the very last detail. Nothing had been left to chance. The moment my accomplice hit the switch, the moment the lights went down, it would happen; unbeknown to and unseen by everyone, history would repeat itself. And when the lights came up again, as they would on cue, the train and its trucks would still be there, but as for its valuable cargo, all that would remain of that was the empty space where it once had been.

This was me then, watching intently as the train and its freight wagons loaded down with beers trundled past at eyebrow height, but with my mind at a lonely railway bridge tucked away in rural Buckinghamshire, which, in the summer of 1963, was about to enter the annals of criminal history.

When they finally caught up with Bruce Reynolds, they thought that they had collared the mastermind behind the most audacious heist of all time, but how mistaken they must have been. For had they got it right, I could hardly have been sitting here, in Kaliningrad’s Art Depot Beer Bar, free to monitor the freight cars of booze as they passed mesmerically before my eyes.

Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad is right on track

The less dramatic but no less novel circumstances in which I found myself was that of watching beer and other intoxicants being delivered to customers’ tables by way of a model train. Although it may seem that I am merely substituting a long-held boyhood fantasy for something from Alice in Wonderland, I am firmly back from both, biding my time in a world where the cliché ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ was beginning to make me wonder why my entire life had been challenged by a second-hand lie detector.

A model train full of beer in Kaliningrad

I was actually sitting beneath the Gothic-vaulted red-brick ceiling of a series of interconnecting catacombs. Whoops, there it goes again! My imagination wandering at will where it will wilfully wander. Not exactly catacombs, but a subterranean space occupied long ago by an elaborate network of beer cellars belonging to Ponart Brewery, which, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries was the largest brewery in Königsberg. This environment met my every requirement, blending the architectural style I love with social history, brewery history and my personal history of drinking beer.

And yet I had not imbibed sufficiently for me to invent the existence of a scaled-down railway that permitted drinks to be conveyed direct from bar to customer.

Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad

The train-delivery concept is as intriguing, as it is entertaining as it is educational. The train leaves Königsberg station, passes through the suburbs of Kaliningrad as they are today and from there heads out into the past across the Königsberg countryside.

To achieve this effect, models detailed in construction mark the route of the train and the settlements at which it stops, the old German names of which fastened to the wall, by corresponding to the booth-style seating, act like table numbers, enabling the bar staff to literally keep tabs on customers and their tariffs. The miniature version of Kaliningrad’s Central Station (once Königsberg Hauptbahnhof) from which the beer train leaves, stands proudly and unmistakeably, thanks to the accurate portrayal of its 1930s’ postmodern façade, at the point where all good beer journeys start, which is, of course, the bar.

Zelenogradsk at a bar in Ponart Brewery complex

To announce the departure of the train and the onset of one’s drinks, a bell is heard to ring, and the train carrying its valuable cargo steams urgently out of Central Station, travelling via Zelenogradsk ~ observable by its Ferris wheel ~ and off across East Prussia, except in this particular instance, it is charging along the side of the wall heading in one’s direction.

Being a beer and bar enthusiast but knowing nowt about model railways, except that they make good money at auction, I am unable to enlighten those who are interested in such things as to the track gauge of the railway, but presume that I can safely say that since the train is hauling lovely big pint glasses, the track width must be considerably larger than a Hornby Double O.

I bet that even Bruce Reynolds couldn’t have told you that.

Seating beer bar restuarant in Kaliningrad

The positioning of the bar’s booth seats at 90 degrees to the wall enables the train to divert to them as a full-sized locomotive would into a railway siding. The train and its precious cargo come to rest on a platform ramped up ‘viaduct’ style across the length of each table at a height above the seated occupants’ heads. This all goes to make the arrival of one’s eagerly awaited beverages infinitely more exciting, even, from the angle viewed, spectacular, the only drawback being that the supports on which the train track rests tend to get in visions way of normal social interaction with others in your group sitting on the opposite side of the table. This disadvantage, however, may be one concealing a hidden advantage, should, for example, the company you are in necessitate some subtle moves on the social evening’s chessboard, viz ‘Amanda Woke is a bit of a lefty, we’ll hide her behind that strut!’

The novelty of Art Depot Restaurant’s train network and the modern predilection for photographing everything, whether it moves or not, is not without an intrinsic risk, for should you be distracted and not act quickly enough to remove the cargo on arrival, the train can suddenly reverse, causing more than a mild hysteria as it makes off with your drinks back to the bar from whence it came.

Mick Hart with beer arrived by train at Art Depot Restaurant Kaliningrad

Mick Hart reaching for beer from model train

It may strike you as rather odd that a beer bar housed in a former beer cellar located beneath a former brewery is not thematically predisposed to the matter of beer production, but the railway as a feature is not without connection both to the brewery itself and to the district in which the brewery stands.

A long while ago … and now

One hundred and seventy-five years ago, Ponart was little more than a village waiting to be subsumed by the expanding city of Königsberg. During this dynamic period, the district’s major employers were Schifferdecker’s Ponart Brewery and, from the 1860s to the 1900s, the Prussian Eastern Railway, which eventually came to be known as the Royal Prussian State Railways. The development of the railway system in East Prussia and Russia significantly impacted Königsberg’s commerce, stimulating demand for enlargement of the workforce.

The resultant influx of labourers generated a need for the provision of homes close to the industries the workforce would be servicing. The high-density living created by these converging influences can effectively be quantified from an observation of the housing stock type, which predominantly comprises three-storey flats built as a series of uniform terraces, and also from an estimation of the close proximity of the Pomart Brewery to the railway’s rolling-stock marshalling yard, which is crossable by a through-truss Bridge, acting as the gateway from the centre of the city to this erstwhile working-class neighbourhood.

So let that be a lesson to you!

If you think that a model train delivering beer to your table is a whimsy of a thing, it will do you no harm to know that at Art Depot Restaurant the railway theme ends not at your table but follows you into the toilets. Not the train itself, or the station master or the ticket collector, but piped noises you would expect to hear at a busy railway station.

Now, toilets are hallowed places with particular sounds of their own, so it is vitally disconcerting to hear the outside world inside of them; indeed extremely difficult when it’s “All aboard!” and the whistle blows to divorce yourself from the governing fantasy that you are actually in a station loo. Blast! I thought, having heard the whistle shrilling, the carriage doors slamming and the train a chuff, chuff, chuffing as it left without me down the tracks. I had only gone and missed the 8.30 to Nowhere! There was nothing more that I could do. Well, what else could I do? I would have to go back to the waiting room, sink another beer or two and hope that anyone watching me would mistake me for being anyone else but the man they thought I wasn’t: “That’s him! That’s not Bruce Reynolds!”

The main thing

Art Depot Restaurant
Kaliningrad, Sudostroitelnaya st., 6-8
(on the territory of the historical quarter ‘Ponart’)

Tel (reservations): +7 (963) 295 74 95

Opening times
Mon to Fri: 11am to 10pm
Sat & Sun: 12pm to 11pm

Website: Art Depot Restaurant

Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad Wonder No More

“I am not crazy; my reality is just different from yours.”

28 February 2025 ~ Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad

There is a gastro-bar on Mira Avenue Kaliningrad which lies at subterranean level. At the bottom of the steps that lead down to its entrance is a sign. The sign says enigmatically: “Fall into the Hole, Get Lost in Time”. The name of this gastro-bar is unlike any I have ever encountered. How many Rabbit Holes have you frequented? Through the windows of the front door, I can see the bar itself, the thing with beer taps on it. Without a second ado, like a ferret down a rabbit hole, and what could be more appropriate, I cross the portal to the other side.

Like Alice who passed before me (Who the !*!* is Alice?), who, it has been suggested, had an addiction of her own, I find myself in Wonderland. But first a passing word, or more, on what we mean by ‘cozy’.

Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad

When people use the term ‘cozy’ they usually employ it in a complementary or even compensatory way, intimating that whilst the place they are describing may be small, it is warm, comfortable and inviting.

Before becoming a city slicker, I lived my life among country folk, whose view of the average rabbit hole was anything but romantic, and I tended to concur with them. But this strictly urbanised concept persuaded me to revise my opinion.

From the moment I entered its rarified world, I felt the urge to compare it to the British pub of yore, with its typical two-room segregation: one for the serious drinker, traditionally known as the public bar, and the other for more discerning types, which went by the name of the lounge. But the two-room similarity ends at this point of the parallel, since whilst one side of the gastro-bar has a discrete and inglenook feel and the other, being slightly larger, though not tremendously so, an aspirant sense of restaurant, neither one nor the other can be said to be less cozy.

It is the larger room of the two, however, where Wonderland is best perfected. Not exactly the gossamer Wonderland as conceived in the maze-like labyrinth of Lewis Carroll’s inventively playful, playfully odd, often obtuse and fantasy-making mind, but rather the rich star-spangled extravaganza bristling with special-effects, which, we are told at the time of writing, is the highest grossing film of director Tim Burton’s career. The framed anthropomorphist images displayed on Rabbit Hole’s walls are not the exquisite renditions of Tenniel or of Attwell, they are loud, near-modern grotesque, decidedly Burtonesque, and the looped Alice in Wonderland film shown silently on the wall-mounted screen needs no introduction: it is Mr Burton’s Hollywood blockbuster.

Olga Hart at Kaliningrad Rabbit Hole Bar

White Rabbit in Rabbit Hole Bar Kaliningrad

One of the most compelling draws of this pantheon to Burton ~ no, not a monogrammed pair of Alice’s ~ is its enticing assortment of Wonderland hats. Casually tossed in a wicker basket just below the TV screen, these simulated props, which identify with Alice’s fictional characters, enable those who are smitten by the happy-snappy smartphone age to plonk them on their bonces, take photos of each other and feed them proudly to their ‘Like-clicking’ friends, who are presumably waiting, phones in hands with nothing but bated breath, for the next instalment of lives that surprise. ‘If the hat fits, it fits’, and the management of Rabbit Hole have latched onto this modern compulsion, for it certainly fits their marketing ploy.

Wearing an Alice hat or not, there is something important you need to know about dining out at Rabbit Hole, which is that before the evening is out you will be rubbing Deep Heat into your neck. I think we can safely say that the last thing Mr Burton would likely want to hear is that his multi-billion-dollar film has been upstaged by a ceiling, but there you have it, and there it is.

Rabbit Hole’s ceiling is a work of art, an engaging, colourful illustration that wouldn’t look amiss in an early 20^th century children’s story book. It is in itself a fitting tribute to the golden age of authentic Alice.

Its canvas is awash with iconic Wonderland objects, which float around in a densely turbulent space as though, caught up in the Wizard of Oz tornado, they have been flung at random and as a whole into ever-lasting affection, which, as all we avid readers know, is the library of our impressionable years to which we owe a lifelong membership.

Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad ceiling is a work of art

‘Crikey!’ you might think, as you crane your neck in admiration, ‘they’ve even crimped’ the ceiling, but in this respect you’d be lavishing praise where praise is not readily due, for whilst the effect lends the images an appropriate dreamlike character, as every student of Königsberg’s history knows, or if he doesn’t should, the series of narrow arches that give the ceilings of basements and those in old industrial buildings in this part of the world their characteristic ripple, as aesthetically pleasing as they are, are principal to the fulfilment of an essential structural purpose. Having made this distinction, however, artistic concept and construction complement each other, as though their eventual coexistence had been ordained by Carroll himself. Carroll’s tale has innumerable twists, but Rabbit Hole’s ceiling has a few of its own.

If you haven’t come to Rabbit Hole to gawp in amazement up at the ceiling, the only explanation can be that perhaps you are here for the food.

Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad

I see a lot of positive comments regarding the quality of Rabbit Hole’s food posted on the internet but have failed to find anything much written about the quantity. A word in your ear, if I may. On the evening that we dined there, one amongst our group was rather disappointed that the prawn salad she had ordered only contained as many prawns ~ two to be precise ~ to justify its name and warrant its plurality. And I was not exactly impressed when the baked potato for which I had paid the British equivalent of three whole pounds was lost in the landscape of a bowl whose suspiciously disingenuous proportions could have taken a single olive and optically turned it into a melon. Taste in all things was in place and thus it goes was quality, but the whereabouts of quantity was anybody’s guess, perhaps it was off taking tea with Carroll’s March Hare and Mad Hatter.

The Mad March Hair takes tea at Rabbit Hole

I have no idea what brand of beer they serve in Alice’s wonderland, do you? But down in Kaliningrad’s Rabbit hole, I was perfectly happy to reprise my friendship with the ever-amenable Maisel’s Weisse, which, as every student of good beer knows, perhaps those very same students who are so up to scratch on Konigsberg’s history, is a special Bavarian wheat beer.

I would have been quite content sitting and sipping at my Maisel’s Weisse whilst gazing at the ceiling ~ pass the crick-in-the-neck cream, please ~ had it not been for my discovery of that something exciting going on at a nearby table of ladies. They had just received a wooden platter from the waiter in a bowler hat containing umpteen shots of different vodkas. You may recall, and if you don’t here is the link that will jog your memory, that I knew all about these special platters and the different vodkas they conveyed, having been bought one at the Dreadnought.

Did Rabbit Hole have a vodka or two tinctured with different flavours? Most certainly they did not! They had a vodka or 54, replied the indignant waiter, and before we could disarm him, he had whipped his phone out of his pocket as smartly would have Hickok had he possessed a mobile phone instead of his trusty side-iron, and tippy tapping away on his phone, not Hickok but the waiter, he began to recite a list of vodkas as long as Alice’s arm when whatever the potion it was she drank inflated her general stature. The only way we could switch him off ~ and here’s a mark of salesmanship ~ was to interrupt his roll call by ordering up a batch of those vodkas upon whose fragrant personalities he was so zealously expatiating.

Bowler-hatted waiter at Rabbit Hole, Kaliningrad

The least adventurous of our party, and, if the truth be known, cursed by the same affliction as Wonderland’s White Rabbit, I stuck to my staple flavoured vodka, horseradish, a choice I presumed would be safe by precedent, but which, as it transpired, was nothing of the sort. The grimace on my face could, I suppose, have been mistaken for the grin on the face of the Cheshire Cat, but whatever it was that he was on, this was not my fix. I am not sure what became of the radish, but I felt the kick that came with the horse.

The next safe bet was cherry flavour, but this concoction as nice as it was being rather more sweet than I cared for, made me think that it may have been more prudent had I approached it via the stepping stones of turnip, carrot, swede and cucumber, but that my friends is what tasting is, a bit of a tightrope to getting it right, but a talking point when getting it wrong.

By the end of this Rabbit Hole evening, the unpredictable marriage of Maisel’s Weisse with exotic vodkas brought me to the realisation why when Alice drank her magic infusions one minute she felt too small for the room and much too tall the next. But the sorcery hadn’t ended here. Before returning to the ground above me, I was aghast to see in my reflection that some of the vodkas had gone to my head and one ~ it must have been carrot ~ had definitely gone to my ears … Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit …

MIck Hart at Rabbit Hole Gastro-Bar Kaliningrad

Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad the Magic of Kavkaz

It’s magic at Kavkaz

31 December 2024 ~ Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad the Magic of Kavkaz

Like many towns and cities in Christendom, the centre of Kaliningrad undergoes a magical transformation over the festive season. Victory Square becomes a yuletide theatre, a stage of glittering silver motifs, including a life-sized Santa’s sleigh with reindeers and a larger-than-life iconic assemblage of 2025 numerals. A lofty, conical Christmas tree transitions through a dramatic series of illuminating colour contrasts. The commercial buildings that border the square are, for want of a no less appropriate term, all lit up like Christmas trees, whilst the municipal building facing the square takes the Christmas biscuit, with its symmetry of grazing lights gently and slowly ringing the changes in complementary hues through a violet, blue and turquoise spectrum.

Sleigh and reindeers Victory Square Kaliningrad

Welcome 2025 Victory Square, Kaliningrad

We were on our way to the Kavkaz Restaurant, and our route would take us across this bewitching bespangled world. I had one eye on the white magic and one eye on the black. In England, this is de rigueur nowadays, especially during the festive season, for every day and every way is a possible Christmas Market. Happy Christmas (and every day) from Britain’s politicians.

With no discernible goblins grabbing at the ghoulies, I felt safe to take my camera out and shoot some snaps for the folks back home. It was then, at that moment, I saw her: a Christmas angel with very long legs, wearing a skirt that was far too short for winter ~ whatever could she be thinking of? ~ and a pair of black leather boots. As amazing as she was, she was just another stocking filler. The real angel was yet to come. She was waiting for us in Victory Square, silver-white with wings to match, a tribute to the Christmas props with which she was surrounded. She was poised in the centre of Victory Square: a photograph waiting to happen.

“Oh, please take a photograph of me, next to the angel!” Olga pleaded. She knows that I have a limited tolerance to taking smartphone photos for the sake of harvesting ‘likes’ on social media. But that is part of the magic of Christmas, the willingness to make concessions for no other reason than because it is Christmas.

It was hard to resist the angel. She looked the perfect angel, with her voluminous white and silver wings, and here I am confessing that for all my reservations about incessant, gratuitous photo-taking, I myself was beyond redemption to get in on the act. The angel must have had some inkling of her photogenic allurement, as she had thoughtfully brought along with her a second set of wings, not so big and so bold as her own, but like the halos she also carried, convenient and prop sized.

Mick Hart with an angel in Victory Square, Kaliningrad

When your halo is a permanent fixture, you have no need for apparatus, but I was chuffed about the wings. I never knew until I watched Frank Capra’s Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life!, the most highly rated Christmas film of 1946 and notably of all time, that angels have to earn their wings, although I have often paused to wonder why mine are so long coming.

The angel, like angels should be, was only too pleased to oblige when we asked to take a photo with her. But just before we assumed the position, she whispered the secret to us that even angels as endowed as they are with all their celestial powers needed to keep the wolf from the door, so a small charge, a small gratuity, 200 roubles in fact, would stamp the seal on the deal. What is 200 roubles, I thought, in the collection box of Christmas. Is it not better to give than receive!

So, with the contract duly signed, Olga and then myself, encouraged by the angel, adopted various angelic-hugging poses, whilst first one then the other snapped away with my mobile phone.

At the conclusion of our photoshoot, we took out our 200 roubles only to be angelically told that we had run up a bill of 1000 roubles, as the going rate for angels was 200 roubles a photograph and not, as we had thought, 200 roubles a sesh. Well, blow me down with seraphim wings, you do learn something every day.

A thousand roubles lighter, we took three or four more photographs without the angel within the Square, which only cost us our time, and then we muggered off to Kavkaz restaurant.

Kavkaz Restaurant revisited

Cool in the summer, both kinds of cool, Kavkaz is in winter forever warm and welcoming, and now with its twinkling Christmas lights festively fondling the susceptible cockles of a receptive holiday heart, no less tender from having been shared with the angel, we were pulled with the ease of a Christmas cracker into Kavkaz’s spellbinding charm.

In an instant and magnificently, staff within this palatial place are swarming all around you: a small, attractive attentive army, ones very own personal retinue, whose task it is to get your clothes off and get you into a seat.

Once divested of your outer garments, you are ritualistically led away into a cavernous mesmerisation, where upmarket, hip and trendy live together in perfect harmony. You mean like Sir Paul McCartney’s ‘ebony and ivory’? No, I don’t mean that at all.

In a kitchen part exposed to view, white smocked chefs are wocking it up as if there is no tomorrow, whilst waiters hither and thither fly. The voices of the seated, who are already pleasantly wining and dining, form a mood-inspiring background murmur, akin to the sound of soothing white noise blotting out the primordial row of that noisy neighbourhood dog.

If ever the Wizard of Oz had owned a palace like this, it could not have been half as entrancing.

Would we be led to the left, or would we be led to the right? On this occasion we are led to the right and given a table for two. My back is against a solid brick pillar, just the way I like it. Seats in restaurants and bars, just like friends and angels, are meant to be chosen carefully; if you don’t feel comfortable where they’ve put you, you won’t enjoy your meal; in fact, the entire evening could be ruined. If you don’t believe me, ask Wild Bill Hickock.

We had dined at Kavkaz before, and the first reason for returning was that Kavkaz serves good food at value-for-money prices, but I was also there on a mission. We have a project pending, and I could think of no better place than Kavkaz to consolidate our knowledge of shabby chic design. From my vantage point, with my back to the wall, I had a commanding view of all that I wanted to see.

Olga and Mick Hart at Kavkaz, Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad

The place was busy this evening, the only available seats were on my left and these, too, would be taken later. A squadron of waiters and waitresses, dressed in their becoming livery of tan trousers and matching waistcoats, flitted swiftly from table to table. The restaurant is so vast that every waiter is wired. Ah, the wonders of the electronic age. Wherever would we be without a plug stuck in our ear or a smartphone in our hands!

The buzz it was a happy one. It had that unmistakeable festive feel that Christmas brings to the better world of Christendom. Long may it prevail. An atmosphere like this, which is to say comfortable, requires a specific beer, and the atmosphere this evening seemed to be calling out for Maisel’s Weisse, but first the waiter brought to our table a complementary carafe of water (you have to drink it sometimes) infused with a sliver of cucumber. That sure was a new one on me!

The beer was fast on its heels, and not long after along came our meals. The restaurant may have been busy, but the service as always was slick and swift.

At half time, who should arrive but Father Frost and his daughter. Shimmering silver and white, they passed from table to table, with a Ho! Ho! Ho! and a Snovam Gordam (Happy New Year), handing out small presents to children, who were wreathed in smiles, with sparkling eyes and amazed and enthralled expressions. Call him Father Frost, Father Christmas, Santa Claus, call him what you will, it’s a non-negotiable fact that the world needs a lot more of him.

To even up the score, there was another, a dark and mysterious figure, wandering amongst us, looking as if he had just stepped off a Roger Corman film set. This sinister apparition, a man we must presume, or something of mortal substance, was dressed from head to toe in black. The hood, or cowl, that he was wearing, completely obscured his face, turning his eyes and thus his soul invisible. If one was to level one’s own eyes to a point at which they strained, one could just make out whatever it was inhabiting concealment, peering out from behind an obfuscating curtain of gauze, an almost impenetrable barrier, which must have dramatically altered the hidden incumbent’s perception of anything outside his inside world.

Hobgoblin and veiled figure, New Year's Eve, Kaliningrad

Perched upon his shoulder, above a hooked, outstretched and angled arm, was an ugly looking so-and-so, which, every now and again, according to its will, would home in on a table of quietly seated innocent folk and invade their zone of comfort. Who was this mysterious stranger? And what was his purpose here, tonight?

Nobody seemed unduly perturbed by the presence of this denizen duo. In fact, wherever the two would wend, which was everywhere, they seemed to raise a smile if not a laugh. But the black veil and swooping creature had an entirely different effect on me. Give me Father Frost and his delightful daughter any day of the week, rather than this Soros hobgoblin and his blighted bedighted funereal future. But I ask you to forgive me. My imagination has a reputation for being overly sensitive and has been known to play tricks before. And yet I did have an auntie called Clair Voyant, and my uncle was blessed with crystal balls … It was enough to make me want to order, in fact I felt I had to order, another pint of Maisel’s Weisse.

Festive season mythology at work in Kaliningrad

When eventually ~ eventually being of no greater duration than possibly two minutes, although to hypersensitive senses it seemed there was nowhere he could not be for any length of unspecified time ~ this ominous be-gauzed spectre of inauspicious things to come, and his malevolent menacing mate, left the spot where they had been preying, my clarity was restored.

I took a gulp of Maisel’s Weisse ~ what nectar! ~ and afforded myself the luxury of staring into the middle distance, freely.

Mirror Mirror on the wall do you tell the truth at all?

Between the wall and the open room, an altitudinous wooden screen of shelving had, in the imaginative Kavkaz manner and by considered intersection, created a narrow corridor, leading away from the dining area down to the gents’ and ladies’ loos. A very important direction.

At the end of this long and narrow walkway, mistaken by some for a models’ catwalk, stands a large, tall, gilt-framed mirror. People walking towards it react to its presence in different ways: some gaze directly into it, in the hope of receiving their own approval; others seem to fall shy of it, briefly looking then looking away, but often casting a sideways glance before they turn the corner, as if by failing to do so, they might lose sight of their very existence; and still others stop in front of it, forced to a halt by their own adoration.

One young lady was so enthralled by whoever it was she wanted to be, whatever it was she wanted to see, that she walked that way several times and even, on one occasion, brought her friends to look in the mirror with her. I wondered what it was that each of them could see and if they saw the same as one another. What was that mirror showing them? Was it their present, their past or their future? And would that mirror still be there, say in 50 years from now, should they ever return to Kavkaz, which reflection would they see: the one they had left behind today or the one which they would bring with them?

The time would come this evening when I would have to walk that way myself, and that time inevitably came halfway through my second pint.

What, I thought, was this mirror up to, so bold, so brash, so strategically placed that in any age more primitive it could have been mistaken for a portal to your soul. In Kavkaz, as in life, this is a mirror you cannot avoid. When you have to go, you have to go. But when it was my turn, I wilfully looked away, not completely sure, however, who or what the mirror had captured, or if that something had looked like me had it been grinning as it went past? Mirrors can be funny things. Things funny be can mirrors. Is it little wonder that vampires seldom use them?

Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad

Back safely at our table the spirit of Christmas welcomed me in the form of a Georgian special. I found a glass of chacha, a Georgian pomace brandy, sitting next to my pint. I had not yet had the pleasure of sampling such a rare intoxicant and was surprised, as much as a vegetarian can be, that I took to it like a hungry shark in a swimming pool, so much so in fact that I had to have another. The fermentation was truly delicious, but I threw myself a lifebelt after the second glass for fear of becoming a goldfish in my reckless Christmas ocean. Sam Cooke knew a lady who couldn’t do the cha cha cha, but that was his problem, not mine. My problem was that I could, but knowing I could, I shouldn’t.

The one thing that I should be frightened of, but, alas, forsooth, am not, is turning into a pumpkin. It is hard to get me home once I have found a hospitable place. But all good things, as we are told, and told, and told, and told … must, and do, come to an end, even a night at Kavkaz.

Leaving the Kavkaz is never easy, particularly when it is still in motion and more so particularly at this time of year. Yet, like all the best and worst of villains swear when their time is up, “You haven’t seen the last of me! I vow I shall return!”, the same was singing in my ear.

And that’s the way it always is, and that’s the way it should be, whenever you go to Kavkaz.

Happy New Year!

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

British pub-like brew bar and restaurant

27 December 2024 ~ Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

Shame on me! It was one of my brothers who first discovered the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery, ‘hidden away’, he said, close to the foundations of a Kaliningrad Spar. That’s Spar as in supermarket not spa as in Roman baths.

He was right in the first place, the location is unusual, or so it seems to us Brits, but not in the second: A large, illuminated logo-branded sign strapped atop a cylindrical portico, all glass and rather tall, facing a busy road that leads to Kaliningrad’s city centre can hardly relate to something said to be ‘hidden away’. But, if that is so, how come I missed it?

The obvious answer is that, unlike my brother, my whole life does not revolve around hunting out bars and beer (polite cough).

I thanked him for letting me know and assured him that when I could find the time I’d stroll along and check out this bar. Then away he went, and off I rushed.

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

Since that pioneering visit, I have returned to the bar under the Spar on three or four occasions, which, given the calibre of the establishment, may not nearly be enough.

My recent tarriance at the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery found it, I am pleased to say, much the same as it was on previous visits. We like things to stay the same, don’t we. How does it go? “If it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it.”

I stood outside for a moment and allowed myself the luxury of admiring the bar’s grand portico, until someone, no doubt wondering what had so arrested me, asked if I needed help. This was really nice of them, but having been beyond help for more years than I care to remember, I politely replied, “It’s much too late,” thanked them for their indulgence, then did all that I could to remove myself before someone else came along and mistook me for Colin Conspicuous.

In any event, there’s only so much portico admiring that one can reasonably do when there are better things to be doing, and beer is one of those better things. The next step was to literally pass through the portico. This is what I did.

The grand portico of the bar below the Spar leads to expectations that bad management could easily upend. Thankfully, no such failure is engendered. After the grand portico comes a grand staircase, which leads to a grand lower floor and to a lady behind a cloakroom counter.

The lights in the entrance hall are dim, mindfully so, and together with the woodwork, of which there is plenty, has a significant impact on first impressions. Would this bar be in England, the dark varnish on the doors, panelling and staircase balusters would peg its origin to the 1980s, but as cultural influences take time to travel, my hunch is that the premises date to the mid-2010s.

The pre-bar experience, in spite of the paintwork’s distressed character, which could be actual or artificial, has rather stately and formal overtones, which carry over into the bar itself. And what a bar it is. Vast is a word that springs to mind: JD Wetherspoon vast.

Size isn’t everything, or so we are led to believe, and this is perfectly true if it fails to work, but in this establishment it does work. In fact, it works rather well, even better than most.

The ratio of seating to open space is well balanced, not at all cramped, packed or crowded. A full complement of seating types is offered, including cubicle, booth, banquet, open table and bar stools. I could run around a place like this all night trying different seats, with a different beer on a different table whilst availing myself of a different perspective. But, of course, I wouldn’t do that, because I look silly enough. Like most of us who are creatures of habit, I usually make for the self-same seat that I have occupied on previous occasions, or find a seat as near as dammit, and these are those that have snob-screened partitions to the left of the entrance facing the bar.

There was one occasion, completely out of character, when feeling oddly adventurous, I went and broke the mold. That’s not quite the same as breaking one’s beer glass, which always is and always has been a tragedy, it’s simply an introduction to saying that I found myself sitting pretty, if ever an idiom of this kind could be used to describe one such as I, elevated high and mighty upon the luxurious centrepiece seating, my foam-frothing formidable pint clasped firmly in my hand, the foam-padded faux-leather ochre beneath my pampered bum, which was, of course, in trousers. This, however, was a one-off move. I suppose I like my regular seat as it looks out over the bar, a regular bar at that, with beer pumps thrusting from it and immediately behind it well-stocked spirit shelves, which add to its British persona.

Bar at Pivovar Brewery Restaurant Kaliningrad

Brewing vats at Kaliningrad's Pivovar Brewery

We have already debunked the myth that Pivovar Restaurant Brewery is hidden away German-bunker style, establishing in the process that this clever bar beneath the Spar packs a surprise in size (notice how I rhymed that!). To that we can now add that there is also nothing in its name that conceals the fact that beers are brewed on the premises and that the grub it serves is rather special.

Almost without exception, internet reviews posted by former Pivovar diners are cock-a-hoop and thumbs-up good. Indeed, I myself have once or twice partaken of the victuals, and though far from being a seasoned gourmet am happy to relate that there was nothing to complain about. So, if you are one of those whose reason for eating out is to give your complaints to the chef, you will need to go elsewhere.

The same advice applies if you are longing for a pint of bad or boring beer, since the beer at Pivovar Restaurant Brewery is consistently applaudable, as much for its quality as it is for variety.

The beer range, though not, for example, as breathtaking as the Yeltsin’s revolving stock, is, nevertheless, not to be sneezed at, with or without your old plandemic mask. Most certainly you will find that in downing one of Pivovar’s beers you will want to sink another, maybe more.

On the occasion of my first visit to Pivovar Restaurant Brewery, I wondered why the waitress had handed me the local newspaper. Did she want me to read the article on the art of looking not quite so obviously English? It was only when I spotted the bar’s distinctive beer vat logo centred within the paper’s masthead that the rouble finally dropped: this was no local rag, it was, in fact, the menu.

I cannot recall in my long and distinguished pub-frequenting career ever coming across something of this nature. It is a simple but effective touch, as the branding remains in your mind. “It’s that bar. You know the one; the big place under the Spar. The one that has menus that look like newspapers.”

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad's newspaper-style menu

a pint of delicious beer on Pivovar bar's menu

There are restaurants and bars in Kaliningrad whose menus are printed in Russian and English. I suspect that this was done to coincide with the World Cup tournaments which Kaliningrad hosted in 2018. Unfortunately, Pivovar Restaurant Brewery did not follow this trend, and since the world we live in today is a lot different than the one we inhabited yesterday, insofar as English-speaking folk are thinner on the ground, the bar’s management must sigh with relief that they saved themselves the extra expense. However, that having been duly noted, I was there on the premises, all alone in the world of written Russian, squinting through my Franklin Splits in an effort to determine which one of their excellent beers they could tempt me with today.

Luckily for me, language has never been a barrier, at least not where beer is concerned, although it doesn’t hurt at all to have a decent memory. I went for a deep, dark beer that cost me 300 roubles. This was not the first time that I had drunk this beer at Pivovar Restaurant; thus, cynics might postulate that working from memory negated the need for further squinting, they might also insinuate that as the beers on the menu’s consecutive pages were rather more expensive than the one I had chosen on the front page, I had gone for the cheapest option.

I was far too preoccupied with practising my reading skills to give a definite account of what it was the waitress said to her colleagues after I had ordered. For all I know, she could have said, “Yes, it’s him, alright, that same old tight-arsed Englishman, disguised by beard as Father Frost. He always goes for the cheapest beers!”

“Happy Cheap Year and down the hatch!”

Beer and beards — they were made for each other.

Foaming around the mouth hair, I did not on this occasion partake of the bar’s cuisine. I had a thousand roubles in my pocket and a calculation in my mind that should I order another beer, I would be left with enough nalichka for a loaf of bread and a tin of baked beans from the Spar above the bar.

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

On the evening that I was at Pivovar’s, I was flying solo, so all I needed was a table, a chair, and, of course, a glass of beer. However, the size of the restaurant/brewery and its range of food and beer make it the perfect fit for business lunches and birthday parties. Birthday parties are a Pivovar speciality and are catered for at a 10% discount, whilst business lunches are bookable throughout the working week, from Monday to Friday inclusive, between 12 noon and 4pm.

Another Pivovar humdinger is its Beer to Go service. Carry-outs can be purchased in 1 litre or in convenient 1.5 litre containers at a cost of 320 and 480 roubles respectively. Alternatively, food and beer combinations can be collected in person or delivered to your door (web-page link here).

And here you will find a link to the brewery’s beer selection.

It would be completely out of character if I failed to mention how much I appreciated the retro signs, wall mirrors and other memorabilia which light up the stairwell and entrance hall to the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery. Not only do we like things to stay the same as they were, as when they do they remain the same as they are, but we also like all things retro. Moreover, we like good beer, which is why we like to like Pivovar Restaurant Brewery.

The main thing

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery
137b Alexander Nevsky St, Kaliningrad, 236008
Tel: +8 (4012) 585-999
Website: https://www.kld-pivovar.ru/

Opening times
Sun to Thu: 12 noon to 11pm
Fri to Sat: 12 noon to 12 midnight

Croissant Café Kaliningrad it tastes as good as it looks

Just a very nice place to eat, drink and relax in

30 November 2024 ~ Croissant Café Kaliningrad it tastes as good as it looks

Never let it be said, and it seldom is not, that an exorbitant number of my posts have a disproportionate beer focus. I like a drink, and I am partial to the odd atmospheric pub/bar, but I am just as at home ~ well, nearly just as at home ~ in a good restaurant or café, and whilst I feel no need to prove the point, I will let you into the secret of one of my favourite Kaliningrad cafés: Croissant.

Croissant Café Kaliningrad

Croissant Café resides on Alexandra Nevskogo Street, which, in my opinion is an excellent street. Among its many other delights and facilities, there is the Tourist Hotel, a well-stocked Spa supermarket, the legendary Cultura Bottle Shop, a shop selling all kinds of inexpensive household products, including socks, pants, slippers and woolly hats, a special bread kiosk, an arty farty barbers, in fact, everything needed for daily sustenance.

Croissant Café is, of course, an all-year-round establishment, but I am particularly drawn to it in the winter months. I like the way on a cold, damp, frosty or a snow-settled day, the light ~ soft, warm and inviting ~ frames its windows in a cosy glow and then, stealing out into the street, tugs at your lapels. If you feel like a moth drawn to a flame, don’t worry. For a café serving quality food, the prices are quite reasonable. You can open your wallet, and you won’t get burnt.

Croissant Café likens itself in atmosphere and fare to the best in French tradition. It proudly emulates the pastry shops and bakeries from which French gastronomy gets its good name. Certainly, its bread selection, which comes in all shapes and sizes, has enough French sticks and crispy baguettes bristling from its wicker baskets to conjure up boulangerie.

Croissant Café Kaliningrad display counter

Its website speaks in mouthwatering terms of all-day breakfasts and exclusive desserts, and its confidence in its ‘confectionary showcase’ allows it to mention by name its celebrated pastry chef Alexander Dianov.

In an illuminated glass display unit below the bread-laden shelves, a sumptuous banquet of choice awaits for those who have a sweet tooth. There are cakes, tarts, tempting delicacies covered in rich dark chocolate, an enticing array of exciting desserts and countless peerless pastries.

Excuse me, why do they call it Croissant Café?

Even though Croissant Café places great store on its sweet’s selection, and not without good reason, its range of savoury dishes are no less gastronomically adventurous or relegated by aesthetic indifference.

Every picture tells a story, and the café’s glossy booklet-style menus capture every dish using full-colour high-res photographs accompanied by descriptive profiles. The only flaw in the café’s menu, which in fairness is an oversight endemic in Kaliningrad, is that it fails in its savoury dishes to cater sufficiently for vegetarians, a funny lot, I know, among whose number I am one, but a consumer group all the same growing exponentially whose converts await entrepreneurs who can convert their conversion into roubles.

I am frankly quite surprised that no one in Russia’s hospitality industry has identified the vast potential lurking in this untapped resource, brought it on, encouraged it and mined it for all it is worth.

Croissant Café (Kruassan-Kafe) Kaliningrad
There are a number of Croissant Cafés centred in and around Kaliningrad each proudly purveying a tempting range of high quality pastry and confectionary products and unique recipe freshly baked breads. Aromatic coffees and a wide selection of teas, plus hot beverages of an avant garde nature complement the café’s cuisine, or, should you wish to pamper the palate further, you could always go for one of the wines from the café’s European selection.

Other cafés in the Croissant Café family in and around Kaliningrad
пл. Победы, 4
ул. Багратиона, 87
Ленинский пр. 67
пр. Мира, 84
пр. Мира, 23
Zelenogradsk, Lenin St, 3
Светлогорск, ул. Ленина 33

On a menu so extensive that it could have been the work of Tolstoy, I could only find three meat-free meals, and when I went to place an order, two of these I discovered though pictorially on the menu were not really on the menu at all.

Croissant Café Kaliningrad

The advantage of being a simple-food person is that disappointments like these have no earth-shattering consequences, and I was not so very much perturbed by the only option left to me, which was avocado salad. This relatively humble offering, like every other Croissant Café meal, could not be better presented, and with an appetising salad dressing and an assortment of tasty breads, each one freshly baked, I was not unhappy with my lot.

As with its savoury dishes and sweets, the café does not stint on its coffee and tea varieties, which are almost more diverse than the migrant-invaded West. It also caters for those whose approach to beverages is more intrepid, who are open to trying something new, something enticingly different, something overtly exotic.

Excuse me, why do they call it Croissant Café?

Contrary to Western media, Russia is rather sweet (see that picture below). I, on the other hand, am not a sweet man (Sorry, what was that you said? You’ve worked it out already.). However, providing the quality and price is right, I have been known to make exceptions, and nowhere am I more inclined to make exceptions of this kind than when dining at Croissant Café.

Cafés can be many things, for example cafés exist in England that bear more than a passing resemblance to the down-at-heel soup kitchens in Chicago’s prohibition era (I kinda like these too!). Croissant, on the other hand, is the very Ritz of cafés. The food is consistently good and presented with such an artistic flair that it would not look exceptionally out of place displayed at the London Tate.

The service, on my most recent visit and on previous occasions, was and has been commendable, scoring top marks for efficiency and ~ now read this café owners and read it in slow motion, since loyal patronage depends on it~ a gold medallion for friendliness. I am not, as some would appear to be, in the habit of frequenting cafés to lord it over the waiters and waitresses. Empathy is good for digestion, and Croissant Café’s friendly staff are a credit to the café’s appeal and to its overall experience.

Now look here and for the last time! Why do they call it Croissant Café?

Because the croissants at Croissant Café are the real, the absolute deal. They are freshly prepared, baked and produced in a seductive variety of flavours and fillings.

People come from near and far to sample and savour the pastries from which Croissant Café takes its name.

Would you care for a tip? Whilst the chocolate croissants should not be passed over, the marzipan ones are marvellous!

The main thing

Croissant Café (Kruassan-Kafe)
Ulitsa Aleksandra Nevskogo, 24-30, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236006

Tel: 8 (401) 230-30-40

Opening times:
Monday to Friday 8am to 9pm
Saturday & Sunday 9am to 9pm

Website: Круассан-кафе

Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer

Arty Crafty it is and all the better for it!

17 April 2024~ Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer

On the same evening that we happened upon the Beer Bar on Prospect Mira and Bar Sovetov, we stumbled upon and into Craft Garage. You’ve guessed it! Whereas it could be argued that my MOT was long overdue, that I was urgently in need of a rebore and my big ends had gone, Craft Garage is not that sort of place.

In spite of the name, the service that Craft Garage provides is strictly beer related. Why else would I beer there? (Ho! Ho!) The clue lies in the ‘Craft’ part of the name. Craft standing for ‘Craft Beer Bar’ ~ crafty, ay!

Craft Garage Kaliningrad

The trend for this type of bar, as opposed to a fully fledged traditional pub, gained popularity in the UK in response to the micro-brewery boom and the inherent advantages of low start-up and maintenance costs together with ~ as the bars are usually small ~ a means of avoiding or at least diminishing the outrageously iniquitous business rates ~ a robber baron tax, which, not unlike death duties, is totally unjustified and is the current primary cause (bar one🙊) of the decay of Britain’s high streets.

The trend for such bars in Kaliningrad, whilst not motivated by the same factors, has gathered pace in recent years, as the taste and therefore the market for beer in general shows an exponential increase, decreasing the sales gap of old between Russia’s flagship vodka.

With my fan belt slipping and my radiator running dry, I was pleased to learn that not only was stumbling into Craft Garage an excellent idea, but that the bar dispensary was in stumbling distance itself, ie just inside the door.

Behind the bar, a youngish chap presided over a chalkboard containing beers of sufficient quantity and with enough interesting names to verily make one’s moustache curl. I’d left mine at home, but the barman’s made up for it. He had one of those Salvador Dali jobs, and the beer was certainly working.

As Salvador Dali was not listed among the range of beers on offer, and I didn’t know how to say in Russian ‘Which beer should I drink to grow a moustache like yours?’, I decided to play it safe, plumping for a beer recently tried and tested at bar Forma, which goes by the name of Kristoffel. It’s a nice name and a nice beer.

Craft Garage is not full of old engine parts, grease monkeys and the smell of spilt fuel and tyres; it is a well-oiled hip joint, suitably decorated and furnished around the novel theme that it has adopted. Its name and image lend themselves admirably to the continued restaurant and bar interest in the nuts and bolts ‘industrial look’, of which there are two categories. Both are shabby chic, but one is more shabby than chic, and Craft Garage occupies the top-drawer end of the chic curve. Excuse me, I am going to use the word ‘plush’.

For example, there is nothing shabby about the brick-effect walls, the cutaway oil drum chairs, the framed exploded vehicle-engine diagrams, the polished tables and bar area. In fact, polished is another good word, as everything in Craft Garage is as clean and sparkling as the pampered plugs of your favourite Rolls Royce’ engine. And whilst the floor is designer distressed, it is completely free of skidmarks.

The vintage accoutrements are, of course, less believable than a black Dr Who, but the willing suspension of disbelief works better for me in this case than my analogous reference. Moreover, Craft Garage has the advantage of allowing you to travel back in time with the company of your choosing, and whilst you can and must fault woke, you cannot fault Craft Garage.

A complete oil change (which you will need if you have spent half a lifetime drinking Watney’s) starts from 300 roubles.

There’s regular and premium, thus every engine is catered for, even the high-performance kind, and as every beer comes complete with a not-to-be-sneezed-at octane rating, when you finally reach the finishing line you can be sure of feeling well tuned up.

Craft Garage, the place to go when you want a night on the pistons!

Mick Hart & Inara outside Craft Garage in Kaliningrad

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro with a Heart of Gold

It’s a venue which immortalises the House of Soviets, serves good beer, hosts music evenings and likes you, the customer.

13 April 2024 ~ Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Do you believe in coincidences? In my most recent post I wrote about the gradual disappearance of Kaliningrad’s most infamous and controversial landmark, the House of Soviets. Less than a week later, I find myself in a subterranean bar dedicated to that very building.

Bar Sovetov is located in what once was, during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the residential quarter of choice for Königsberg’s affluent citizens.

On foot, it is something of a trek from the city centre to this still sought-after district, but it is one I made on numerous occasions in the days when a bar, long since gone, the enigmatically named Twelve Chairs, exercised a consistent influence and justified the effort.

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

Whilst in the character of its rooms, Bar Sovetov does not possess the intricacy or the old-world charm that gave Twelve Chairs its je ne sais quoi, it is no less thought-provoking in the nature of its decoration and appurtenances of thematic quirk.

The two-roomed bar, with its truncated corridor leading to the lavs, is very much a pop art haven. Victor Ryabinin, former artist and local historian, would have adored it! Symbolism abounds: ‘Look Out!’ the slogan reads. ‘Big Brother is Watching you!’ You see it above the full-sized wall mirror in which you are watching yourself.

A white face mask framed between two suspended lamps exudes from the wall. Wearing a baseball cap in such a way that it partly conceals its features, it holds to its lips an admonitory finger attached to a long white arm. As with the face above it, the arm emerges from solid brickwork as it would through the fold of a curtain. Both face and arm are whimsical, especially in the matter of their relative dislocation, but irony and surrealism are the uniting forces that bring them together.

These are just two of many examples of Bar Sovetov’s camp milieu. Wherever you look, be it high or low, another element of the quaint and fanciful leaps out to greet and surprise you.

With the obvious exception of Aleks Smirnov’s Badger Club, lovers of the out-of-the-ordinary will be hard pushed to find even among Kaliningrad’s most unconventional watering holes anything that surpasses Bar Sovetov’s quaint burlesque. But for all that it camps it up, the nostalgia has a genuine ring; it springs from a source of real affection. And the humour the props elicit, be it aimed at you and me or tailored to the refined perception of the discerning intellectual, leaves plenty of form intact for the inquisitive mind of the history buff.

The genesis, erection, completion and the long-standing but idle years of the House of Soviets’ occupation are captured step by step in a series of timelined photographs. The images of the building in its promising phase of construction, with cranes on either side, are particularly poignant memories, given that in its obliteration almost identical cranes in almost identical places stand either side of the shrinking structure.

On the opposite side of actuality, a wall in the bar’s first room is a bold painted visual replica, close up and in your face, of the House of Soviet’s exterior. The effect is profoundly Gotham City, gaudy, haunting, claustrophobic but seminally cartoon, a perfect piece of ‘dark deco’ kitsch. Further urbanisation occurs not in the question itself, which is off the wall whilst on the wall, but in the way it is daubed across the wall, which reflects the mind of graffiti man stretched to its utmost limit: “Who,” it asks, “killed the House of Soviets?” If we didn’t laugh, we’d cry.

More real photos of the fated hulk that over its 53-year existence dominated Kaliningrad’s skyline, exciting in its awesome prospect, ambivalent and contentious in what it actually stood for and why it stood for so long, can be found in the bar’s back room.

Mick Hart and Inara at Bar Sovetov in Kaliningrad

It is here that the structure’s rightful place in the socio-political era into which it was given a sort of life or maybe a life of sorts is given historical context. Framed copies of Soviet art, amusing, powerful and all iconic, visually break up the hard brick-wall to which they are attached, whilst in one corner of the room a little shrine pays tribute to the final days of Sovietism.

There, upon a shelf, rubbing shoulders with the printed word and a quaint assortment of nick-nacks, sits a large portrait photograph of if not the architect of perestroika then the man who is widely considered to be its chief executive officer, former General Secretary Gorbachev, twinned in the opposite corner with a replica set of traffic lights, which, for some exotic reason or perhaps no reason at all beyond their anomalous presence and illuminative oddity, cast a lurid reddish glow across the whitewashed brickwork.

The seats in this comic-strip memory, when not authentic 70s’ vintage, are made from wooden pallets, painted to look distressed, put together as benches and kindly equipped with padded seats. However, recalling the slatted wood benches with which Kaliningrad’s trains were furnished twenty-three years ago, such convenient cushioned luxury may be but the useful product of indulgent historical revisionism. Whilst the past is unrelenting in its prescribed but often unforgiving and impractical perpetuity, concessions ought to be made, don’t you think, to our poor post-Soviet posteriors. Historical accuracy has its virtues, but is it worth corns and blisters?

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

The bar itself, that is the thing on which when you buy your beer it temporarily rests on top and the area to the rear of it, is a content-managed zone, where normal things normally sold behind bars share more than their fair share of shelving space with the weird, the wild and the whimsically whacky. Note the hollow concrete blocks shown in the photo below that have been used to comprise the wall of the bar. Is that or is it not a passing nod to the House of Soviets?

A conforming principle of all such bars, that is to say craft-beer bars, is that the beer selection is written in chalk on good old-fashioned blackboards. What is it, I ask myself, and I suppose you ask yourself too, about this rudimentary practice that makes it so applicable, so pleasingly, conventionally and fundamentally right and so well received in its prime objective, which is to call to our eager attention the dispensation of quality brews? When you’ve found the answer to that one, you might go on to answer the question ‘Who killed the House of Soviets?’ I have a hunch that in both cases we will discover the hand of Old Father Time.

From the six or so beers on offer, I ordered myself a ‘Milk of …?’ Er, a ‘Milk of …?’ What was the name of that beer? Ah yes, now I remember, I bought myself a ‘Milk of Amnesia’. How could you not drink a beer like that, with a name so unforgettable?

In summing up the Bar Sovetov experience, the beer is good. The atmosphere is atmospheric. The people who run the bar are real; in other words, they are genuinely friendly and they are also good at what they do. They effortlessly embody and earnestly convey the qualities prerequisite for fulfilling the role they have given themselves, that of convivial mine host, in an age when many are either not up to it or simply not fit for purpose.

Those who earn their living in the hospitality trade at customer-facing level, would do well to bookmark this truth, that the bar or pub in which they perform is as much a stage as any other and their customers are their audience. Once the curtain goes up, if you cannot manage authenticity, you must put yourself out there, put on a smile and remember that it’s show time! If the act is one the punters like or at least is one that they can believe in, and the beer is good and well kept, they’ll keep on coming back. Loyalty is everything, and that applies to the service industry as it does to everything else, and I cannot think of a better bar more deserving of it than Sovetov.

The main thing:

Bar Sovetov
Prospekt Mira, 118 ground floor, Central District, Kaliningrad, 236022

Link to street map: https://2gis.ru/kaliningrad/firm/70000001082036462

Tel: +7 921 616 36 26
Telegram: https://t.me/barsovetov
VK: https://vk.com/barsovetov

Opening times:
Mon: Closed
Tues to Thurs: 4pm to 12 midnight
Fri, Sat & Sun: 4pm to 2am

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Good beer in a vintage-inspired bar

13 March 2024 ~ Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Those of us in the UK who are firm believers in the importance of preserving traditions and the history of our country, and who do their bit in this regard by paying homage to, and overpaying for the beer in, one of the oldest legacies of our country’s heritage, I am talking about the British pub, will be well acquainted with such familiar pub names as the King’s Arms, Nag’s Head, Fox and Hounds etc, and had you been around in the 1980s and 90s the fad of renaming pubs with silly names, such as the Slug and Lettuce and Goose and Firkin, but in all your days of pub frequenting you may never have come across any drinking establishment, be it a pub or a bar, that goes by the name of Form.

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Form is a malleable word with manifold definitions, as any search through online dictionaries testify. One of the simpler meanings is that of a hard, plain bench, the more complicated reserved for the exotic world of aesthetics. Then there’s ‘he’s got form’, which is, in police parlance, another way of saying he’s done time, which is another way of saying he’s been in the nick, which is another way of saying that he has been in prison. But whether ‘form’ has to do with a hard-arsed bench or is recognition of a criminal record, one thing we know for certain is that Form is the name of a Kaliningrad bar that sits next door to the Yeltsin.

In short, the Yeltsin and Form are geographical neighbours, located either in the same building or one that is joined and adjacent. I have not quite made up my mind which of the two it is, as usually when I visit them I have downed a pint or two, which seems to a certain extent to demagnetise my compass. Suffice it to say, for arguments sake, that the space between the two establishments is less than a stone’s throw away.

This convenience of vicinity does not automatically mean that once you have found the Yeltsin, you have also found Form. The Yeltsin has a belter of a sign and sits prominently on the cusp of a junction which, at certain times of the day, is fairly heaving with traffic. So, if you are looking out for bars, the Yeltsin is hard to miss, and those that say it isn’t should hurry along to SpecSavers.

Conversely, its bedfellow, Form, has no such startling signage, at least not one that is visible from the busy vehicular street, and as the entrance is off the pavement, down some steps and tucked at the back of a forecourt, getting to know that the bar is there either involves a pedestrian element or relies upon word of mouth.

Take us, for example, me and my fellow pub crawlers. It was the bar staff at the Yeltsin who apprised us of Form’s whereabouts in answer to our question where is the next nearest bar?

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

Vicinity, and close proximity, are not the only things that the two bars have in common. Both bars cater predominantly for a young clientele. Both, in fact, are student hangouts. Both bars have an appealing basic look. Both have a vintage approach to décor, and some of their customers, not all, but some, have a bit of vintage about them. Both bars cater to the craft beer penchant for the names of beers and their respective strengths to be written in chalk on boards. And, last but by no means least, both bars have a reputation for keeping and serving premium beers on a selective, rotating basis.

Where the two differ is that the Yeltsin is more alpha male and Form more feminine. Now, don’t get excited and don’t go all western liberal gender woke on me, I do not mean it like that. My definition divides the two bars into one which seems geared to young male drinkers who equate craft beers with male camaraderie, and the other that seems to attract a more mixed crowd. Or, to put it another way, go to the Yeltsin for good beer, to listen to tracks on a classic juke box and a game of table football ~ you can also admire the urbanised bogs, with their lashings of bold graffiti ~ but go to Form if you want to sit in a group around tables you’ve pushed together to discuss the grades you got for your essays.

Neither of the two bars are better than the other, not in the strict comparative sense, but nuances in composition lend to each a slightly different feel.

From an architectural standpoint, Form has less form than Yeltsin. Yes, yes, I know: he was a larger-than-life man, with a lived-in and craggy face … Form, on the other hand, is little more than a room ~ little more than a large room, granted ~ hived off down one end by the inclusion of a shelving unit filled with intriguing vintage stuff, which acts as a screen for a makeshift cloakroom.

Form is not exactly spartan, but neither is it cluttered. It contains a number of antithetical but, even so, well-planned pieces that might not or ought not work together, but in Form they actually do. And Form is very comfortable. The floor may be plain old concrete, but it is patched with vintage mats — real, proper, woven mats, agog with interesting patterns. The retro furniture is hotch-potch, but all the more engaging for it. The wall mirrors look in shape as if they once belonged to, and are now on loan from, a 1970s’ lava lamp, and up there on the ceiling some strange artistic drawing is going on: lots of dark black swirling lines, some being tightly compressed, others apart and free flowing, which would not look less at home superimposed on a TV weather chart.

As for the lighting ~ how could I possibly not mention the lighting! ~ the ambient light is dimmed exactly to the right level, and the wall lights are of that special kind that direct illumination in an accommodating intensity only to where it needs to be and just as much as there needs to be, thus creating the sort of mellow cloistered moon-filled shadows in which a canoodling couple could easily fall in love or a single man could fall in love with his beer.

The bar within the bar, ie the actual bar itself, is straight out of DIY Ville. Wooden, too high for comfort, so that when you try to lean upon it, you look as if you’re begging, which, when the bar is full, I imagine you very well might be, all behind it is on display ~ buckets, pipes, barrels, glasses ~ whatever they use behind the bar you see it. It’s a wonderfully basic bar and that’s basic with a capital ‘Б’.

As the seating is notably mismatch, finding a chair to suit you should not be a crucial issue, but in the unlikely event it becomes one, there is plenty of scope for musical chairs.

Craft Beers on Form at Forma Bar Kaliningrad

My most recent visit to Form was a strictly Jack Jones affair: I was going it alone. Having purchased for myself a half-litre of Kristoffel Blond, six percent in strength and 400 roubles a pop, I took up temporary residence in a low-slung, wooden-framed fully cushioned chair, which, in my professional opinion as an always-on-duty vintage dealer, had travelled into the 21^st century from way back in the 1970s. The chair and I were perfectly matched. Within a few minutes of sitting there, a couple, on whom I had never laid eyes before, opted for the seats opposite and joined me at my table.

In broken Russian and beery English Me, and in beery Russian and broken English Them, we conversed quite satisfactorily. What the gentleman of the two did not know about craft beers you could write on a half-torn beer mat. Thus, we spent in our comfortable vintage chairs a pleasant 60 minutes talking the kind of talk that only beer drinkers are able to talk whilst they are drinking beer.

Definitively and succinctly put, Kaliningrad’s Form is a comfortable, laid-back place. It has a lighting system to sing about, a convincing vintage feel and beers you can fall in love with. It caters inexclusively, but let us hint predominantly, for those who are young and intelligent enough to know what it means to drink sensibly, but nevertheless probably don’t, and strange old English fellows who certainly do but don’t, never have and in all likelihood never will be able to, but who are skilled in waxing lyrical about beers of outstanding quality — which is something that Form has — and also about good bars — which is something that Form is.

If it was up to me, I would say that Form is always on form, but I’ll leave it up to you to form your own opinion.

Bars to like

The Yeltsin
Pub Crawl around Kaliningrad
The London Pub
The Dreadnought
Sir Francis Drake
True Bar

Patisson Markt Restaurant Kaliningrad Good Value

Light, bright and affordable ~ Pattison Markt

24 February 2024 ~ Patisson Markt Restaurant Kaliningrad Good Value

It’s one of two buildings that flank the entrance to what was once Königsberg Zoo, now the Kaliningrad Zoopark. Once upon a time, it was an old eatery with a distinctly Soviet feel. In 2004, I nicknamed it the Restaurant of Many Menus, for just that reason. In one would go and out would come the menus, several at least, weighty tomes, impressively, if not dauntingly, cram-packed with a plethora of traditional Russian dishes, all for one and one for all unashamedly non-vegetarian.

Not so today. Gone are the leatherette bound-in-brown gastronomical bibles, replaced by simple card menus that are pretty and neat by design and eclectic in their choice of nosh. Attractive in themselves, they are by no means incipiently necessary, since Patisson Markt operates on the self-service principal. All you have to do is skim your pre-selected tray along the polished metallic surface of the long zig-zagging shelf and construct a meal of your choosing from the many and varied selections of food displayed in the glass-fronted cabinets.

Above: The long serving counter cuts a dash of its own; a glass and metal complement to the unadorned concrete ceiling, all agog with pipes and wires, as if plaster board and trunking have yet to be invented.

The long zig-zag cafeteria counter offers a mouth-watering selection of savoury dishes, with more than enough vegetarian options to placate the non-meat palate. As a lover of simple food, it is not often that I can say that I was impressed with what was on offer, but here I most assuredly was.
That’s me saying that …

As might be supposed, meat and fish are everywhere, but Kaliningrad has at last come of age, and there are easily more than enough food variants not containing animal parts to placate and delight the fragile sensibilities of the staunchest vegetarian. As far as I am aware, this is as true of the sweets as it is of the savoury dishes. To my knowledge, none of the ice creams, tartlets, cakes, pastries and anything delicatessen are made with pork or beef, so if sweet-toothed things turn you on, Patisson Markt should flick your switch.

The carousel below provides a tantalising exposition of the delicious variety of food on offer at Kaliningrad’s Patisson Markt.

Patisson Markt Restaurant

This welcoming restaurant next to the zoo has come a long way since it was something entirely different. Various tweaks over the years, followed by a redefining makeover, have transformed a restaurant which was perfect for its time, including its bulky menus and traditional Russian grub, into bright and breezy, hip and buffet, thanks mainly to a design initiative that cunningly unites the naturalistic world around an alfresco dining experience.

Roof decoration restaurant near Kaliningrad Zo

I spy whilst eating apple pie (yum), an unusual-looking roof roundel. Whatever it is and whatever it may have been, it visually consolidates the foliate theme, that of nature’s outside in.

The naturalistic elements feeding this idea are simple but effective. Take open-ended, cubicle-type, high-standing shelving units, some made of wood others from ebonised steel, fill the compartments with logs cut to order, add convincing imitation ferns, plants and jars of pickles and arrange them in such a way so that each distils its own space from the generic space it occupies.

Screening technique Patisson Markt Restaurant, Kaliningrad

In any other interior context, the long and angular servery would focalise the content of the room, but hived off behind a light-blue-painted screen with pockets of shelving modules and open louvre window shades, it melts into the background, letting the props and various artifices manage mood and atmosphere.

Above: Louvre screen and windows … I’ve seen this done in the Kavkaz Restaurant: the knowing that you are inside but the feeling you could be outside. The blinds and trellised glass windows add an imaginative touch.

The open plan but cleverly screened nature of the long room together with its floor to ceiling windows, pleasantly partner to give a sense of bright and airy that is just seclusive enough to create the illusion of private dining without the feeling of being hemmed in. I don’t have to tell you how well it works, as I have told you that already.

Former restaurant area of Kaliningrad restaurant by the zoo

The immediate room from the entrance lobby is the one where the former restaurant plied its trade. However, its ‘old-fashioned dine in secret whilst feeling uneasily bourgeoise’ has since been consigned to history, and I am perhaps the only one who remembers its enclosure and secretly mourns the loss of its War and Peace style menus, which have faded into obscurity long ago with my youth.

Nevertheless, of the two dining areas it is still the least ethereal. The luxury of light and bright resides in the long extension or knocked-through room on the other side of the building, which, through the conceits that I have described, bring the outdoors indoors, making the restaurant summer in summer and keeping it summer in winter.

Patisson Markt Restaurant

Patisson Markt is light on your senses and also light on your pocket. It is a ‘something for everyone’ place, even for a plain-and-simple-food man like myself, and for those with more discerning tastebuds there is plenty more besides, all with taste and quality but not at the price of a trip to the moon.

The main thing

Patisson Markt
Prospekt Mira, 26, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 236022

Tel: +7 981 476 48 23

Opening times
Friday & Saturday 9am to 12am
Sunday to Thursday 9am to 11pm

And you should try these whilst you’re at it?

Mama Mia Restaurant
There are pre-set lunches at a very good price. I had Greek salad, soup and pizza accompanied by cranberry juice.
Café Seagull by the Lake
Café Seagull is an excellent place for simply relaxing. The terrace and the restaurant windows look out over Kaliningrad’s ‘pond’. The cuisine, both in terms of presentation and taste, received top marks and the service could not be faulted.
Balt Restaurant (Zelenogradsk)
Recommend the Balt? I’d buy it if I could!
Soul Garden (café garden complex)
If you don’t go there, you’ll never know what you’ve missed! It’s unusual, and the view is well worth viewing.