things move around

Beel?

Yes please.

You vant ze beel, nyet?

Nyet, I mean, Yes please.

Fine. Taxi tzirty-tzive meeneets least OK? You can at bar.

We can at bar? Dobre-zhen!

—————————————

So ended our sortie to the St Petersburg, as it had begun, in the manner of a Len Dieghton classic. To get in to this place you need to ring a bell, wait, and fondle your Kalashnikov. Or, be an unreconstructed Soviet. To be on the safe side, I did both (let’s face it - the former is not a chore). It worked supremely. I was embraced by the system and made copious, collective merry therein.

My companion for this visit to “the only Russian restaurant outside London” (excluding the Motherland herself, and perhaps Kaliningrad, if that can be described as a restaurant) was “two cuppacha for ma wife,” Claire. Since this is a dining-out review, said lady will henceforth be known as “Arabella.” Her interjections will be devastating, I’m sure. Come to think of it, she’d go down a treat in Grozny.

And what treats there were! Badheads, please exit the room! For what you are about to receive, and perhaps Digest, dear Reader, is a shining antique samovar of a review. The decor was exquisite - expertly-laid tables, regal yet devenustated wallpaper, and small portraits of obscure Tsars scattered like pearls. Soon after we’d ordered, a wizened old Ukrainian struck up his first melodic ode on the Korg. So far so Taverna. But when Uri (son of Lenin) joined in on his beat-up old bazouki, our hearts were plucked from our chests and transported post-haste to romantic Russ-land, where sad ugly old ladies perpetually?scrub grey laundry in cabbagey puddles. This, as every reviewer before me has piped up, is A Good Thing. Happy? I’m not. I hate banging on about the ambience. Let’s face it, we were there to get stuffed for the common good, and forget that Perestroika ever occurred.

To kick off our Red Army-parade, I opted for something sensational.

What was it called?? Oh come on…

Err…

Well, it ended in -aya. And it came in a Soyuz capsule with a spoon kept far away from Uri Geller. This spoon could have been used to time electrons. In its longness and straightness it defied and belied its true design. This surgical handtool was fit for its purpose - the Lander vessel was tall and deep and filled with the as-yet unpenned definition of glutiny. Beneath a Sargasso-Sea of molten cheese was an inspired blend of not-quite-chicken and more-than-mushroom. A sporty finesse of form was hitched to an exotically stodgy caravan of lard. And we were truly blessed as we put on another spare tyre. Afterwards, unbelievably, I had acquired the urge to get up and Cossack-dance. But believe it I did, thanks in part to the excellent if expensive Bordeaux which was suffering at our increasingly greedy hands.

Arabella plumped for the blini. Blini is effaced by its description as a “pancake”. Eating blini on Shrove-Tuesday would be a mistake. In fact, I can only assume that the Russians munch on this stuff morning, noon and dark-watches-of-the-night. I have a feeling that blini is the Russian word for “food.” The menu lists blini as starter, main and dessert, each time in half a dozen guises, and all, we discovered, with good reason. Like a quick fuck, you can do it any time. But you need a pardner to share the mess, or at least (as was the case here) to drool at the spectacle. It helps if one of you likes salad - but that’s as true of life as of blini. Arabella described the presentation as “like a duvet-cover,” by which I can only presume she meant that it warmed her up in a dark hour and protected her from random mad-axemen.

It occurred to me, in a moment of clarity, that Russian folk songs are what S-Club-7 were ineptly trying to be. Again, I felt a barely-controllable urge to uncover my pins and make like a Cossack. Thankfully Peter the Great, sideburns aglow, dissuaded me.

Pondering this, I waited for Arabella to finish her blini. Thirteen thirty-year-old men, at least six of whom were bald, marched in to celebrate a birthday. On the upside - I?learned what the Dome of St Petersburg was. On the downside, the birthday in question wasn’t mine.

We drank frantically and waited, slavering, for the mains.

Now, since this is a review, and besides, I’m rather wasted, I should digress. It seems to me that drinks, like animals, bicycles, people and vacuum-cleaners, are divisible into two fundamental forms. In the case of drinks, these forms are (i) the Absolute and (ii) the Relative. On the Absolute side, you’ve your Cider, your Whisky, your Brandy, your Gin, your Grog and your Vodka. These are all bevvies with unarguable normative qualities. There are certain vareties of each of these which are universally accepted as foul, and only exist because they’re cheap. On the other side of the still, on the Relative side, you’ve your Ale, your Wine, your Cocktails, your Gin, your Obscurities and Poteen. In the case of these, each type will be beloved of someone, albeit a total and utter imbecile. Whereas even an imbecile might genuinely enjoy that Bulgarian White, or that Slippery Nipple, or that Carling, the fact remains: enjoy it, they do. But even the lowliest meths-bum will admit, that despite his penchant for the roughest Grog, or Napoleon, or Bells, he drinks it because it’s cheap, or a retirement-gift, or a bottle-bank freebie. My point? Vodka is a drink of distinction. Given the means, there is no rationale for imbibing inferior vodka.

And it was a superior vodka which came with Arabella’s steak. One shot only, alas, since my Pelemi (or whatever - I might as well make these names up, for all you care) didn’t have it as an aside. A second was swiftly ordered, and there began an Odyssey of the stuff. The wine, excellent as it had been, was gone and forgotten, like a fuck on an 18-30. The vodka was with us and is with me now as I write this, flaming my belly like a signal beacon, writing psalms on my intestine. I necked it down with gusto, and Arabella’s, too.

Speaking of flames, I should fan those of my companions’s main. The “Rasputin in Flames,” while bearing no resemblance to everybody’s favourite psychotic mystic, bore an excellent resemblance to an expertly-flambéed steak. With a sauce whose raison-d’être was to play piquant-boo with your tongue, the beef went down as rare beef should - with a lot of kicking and screaming. A side of pseudo-fried-potatoes was mediocre, but starchily and floppily in the spirit of things. Rasputin in Flames? Rasputin at the right hand of God Above, more like.

My Pelemi was the perfect dinner for the wannabe Indiana Jones. A no-nonsense vat of stock, topped (again, thank gawd) with shimmery, gutbusting cheese, within which were suspended a dozen-plus gooey dollops of prime cowfeed. Sure, they were meatballs. But I was minded to picture them, as I hacked them apart and devoured, as lemur-brains, served up to me by the high-priest of Hari-Mumm-Ra as a thankyou for recovering his sacred sceptre from a quasi-Nazi. That I could picture this and still wolf the?beauties down, savouring every cannibalistic mouthfull, should tell you sufficient about the overpowering meatiness of the brew. Arabella sampled it, and remarked “it’s meaty, not Bisto-y.” She had to explain to me that Bistoy was not a Bolshevik. Although if he was, he would have gone home every night to a bowl of Pelemi.

Whilst she toyed with her unconventional meringue (”too sweet even for the sweetest of sweet-tooths,” apparently, and she should know), I pulled the trigger on another two slugs of vodka. I wondered whether or not the plural of “sweet-tooth” was in fact “sweet-teeth,” but then decided that whichever it was, by this point in the review no fucker would care.

And neither did we, as we tipped our ostentatious, ostrich-plumed, Imperial hats, and, tipping twenty percent for the distinctly un-Soviet (except for the sexy accents) service, waltzed off into the night, celebrating Glasnost and a bill, with drinks, of well under three figures.

Later on, I thought we were three figures. And that was now, and I was wonderfully wankered, and starting out on this marathon review.

—————————————

St Petersburg, York St, Liverpool L1.