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Liam Hetherington
Liam Hetherington
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1) St. Petersburg - A New Year's Revolution

1) St. Petersburg - A New Year's Revolution

Russia - 29/12/08

This is how it all began.

It was Christmas, and a group of seven, mostly old school friends, decided to take the opportunity to meet up for dinner while we were all in the same city for once. Ed was up from London. Ian had flown in for the festive period from his new life in Perth, Australia. So the only real question to answer was: where to meet?

As several of the party had studied Russian at school the suggestion arose that we visit a Russian restaurant. I did not take Russian (I studied Greek instead), but I had been trying to find a Russian restaurant in Manchester ever since I had travelled along the Trans-Mongolian railway from St Petersburg to Beijing with Ed back in 2002. I had been shocked to stumble across just such a place back in February, St Petersburg on Sackville Street, but had not yet found time to visit, so this seemed the obvious opportunity. Moreover, the two cities of Manchester and St Petersburg are twinned.

We had reserved a table at St Petersburg in advance. Paul had previously come on a Friday evening in December when the place was crammed and hopping with traditional Russian folk music and dancing. Yet arriving after work I found the place empty. Indeed, apart from ourselves no more than two more tables were occupied during our meal. But then, maybe a Monday evening in the lull between Christmas and New Year is not the best time to find a lively scene…

The bar menu had over 70 individual vodkas of different strengths, brands and flavours. Not really the thing on a work-night sadly, so we tended to stick to the Baltika beer from St Petersburg itself (though sadly they only had Baltika No. 3, and not the entire range brewed under that brand). Actually, Ed did have a shot of krupnik (made with honey), but he maintains that this was purely for medicinal purposes!

We were seated at our table (blue tablecloth, white cover, red napkins, echoing the Russian flag). The walls were decorated with etchings of Imperial St Petersburg in its fin de siecle grandeur; the modern day intruded through a muted TV showing a Russian news channel and Russian pop. The menu was very extensive. Just looking back at it now on their website reminds me that there were over 90 different dishes listed – certainly a banquet fit for the tsars! It was once we had ordered that I began to muse out loud. Just how many other national cuisines could we find in Manchester? It may be the UK’s second largest city and a famously cosmopolitan and tolerant place, but in world terms it really isn’t that big. Would it be possible to spend a year patronising separate establishments representing as many different countries as possible, all without leaving one’s hometown? Would it be possible to go Around the World in 80 Meals?

The more we started to think about it, the more it seemed like an interesting proposition. If the credit crunch and an abysmal exchange rate prohibited foreign holidays, why not try to broaden our knowledge of foreign cuisines at the same time as we broadened our knowledge of what Manchester had to offer. Of course, it would be an uphill struggle. Manchester is no London or New York, cities in which I dare say we could complete the challenge without breaking a sweat. This would be a challenging New Year’s Resolution… but then aren’t all the best ones challenging…?

On that cue the waitress appeared with our starters. I had been tempted by the Soup Gribnoy with mushrooms and barley, but in the end had opted for plain borsch, the classic deep red beetroot soup (£5.95). Since my last visit to the Neva in 2005 I had had to make do with packets of Polish borsch mix, but they were nothing compared to this chunky concoction with chopped veg. Paul went one further with Borsch Po Ukrainsky, where meat was added to the soup (£6.95). Ian had gone for the Vladivostok soup, a hot Oriental dish of noodles, prawns and chicken (£6.95). Without exception, I think we all thoroughly enjoyed our soups.

After having our hopes raised, I’m sorry to say that some of us were a little disappointed by the main courses. Some were great – Ian’s seafood kebabs (Sablia Neptuna, £17.95) looked marvellous. But I was underwhelmed by my duck in plum sauce. This had been marked as a special on a loose piece of paper inside the menu. The duck breast itself was not a bad-sized piece of meat, loosely covered by its fatty skin. However, rather than being cooked in a plum sauce, the sauce came separate in a little pot, cold and jelly-like. The conclusion I drew – rightly or wrongly – was that this sauce was just kept in its pots in the fridge or freezer, and never actually met the duck until you added it on your plate. The few bits of salad that accompanied it seemed like an afterthought. And finally, the chips were still cold inside. Worse, Ana’s chicken was not cooked through fully either. The waitress did regain points for bringing her an entire new meal rather than just zapping the existing plate in the microwave, but really there is no excuse for not cooking a chicken steak properly in a restaurant – especially one that is not rushed off its feet.

I would return to St Petersburg. I live in the hope that we visited on an off day. It is obviously a favourite with the ex-pat Russian community in Manchester, and it holds Russian parties on weekend nights which sound great. However, I have to say that my meal here was mixed – great soups and poor entrees. Would this set the scene for our revolutionary resolution?

(For the sake of completeness, other ‘Russian’ thrills could have been achieved at Revolution. This is a chain of vodka bars that has spread out from Manchester – though the emphasis here is more on mixing and matching your flavoured vodka shooters and cocktails, rather than the classy stuff kept behind the bar in St Petersburg. Branches of Revolution can be found by Oxford Road station, in Deansgate Locks on Whitworth Street West, on Wilmslow Road in Fallowfield, and in Parsonage Gardens behind Deansgate itself. They pretty much gaurantee fun nights out, though I did once go to the latter branch for lunch with a friend – standard bar food since you ask – and I found the table service exceptionally slow)

From journal Around the World in 80 Meals! (part 1)

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