St Petersberg Restaurants

[itsjb1]

I am interested in hearing from anyone about their lunch experience when touring with Denrus or Red October. If you stopped for lunch at a local restaurant, what was the food like? What was the cost? Is there a restaurant that you reccommend?

[JodiBB]

On the first day of our RO tour, we box-lunched it while taking the hydrofoil to Peterhov's Palace. The box lunch included a sandwich, bottled water, cookies and an apple.

 

On the 2nd day, we stopped in a restaurant. We were served borscht (sp?) and then breaded chicken with potatoes. The chicken/potatoes was good, but bland. There was no spices in the breading and gravy was not provided. I don't know if this is a Russian way of eating chicken or not. I cannot remember what the dessert was, but it was a nice restaurant...casual, intimate. I think the meal was $17 pp.

[sultan_sfo]

Sep 2005, our group leader that dealt with RO begged and begged before our cruise to take us to a restaurant where locals eat. Guess what? We ended up with the same restaurant menu as JodiBB! It was terrible -- and worse the menu for our lunch was preset. So we could not even make a selection from the restaurant menu. Maybe the kickback to the tour guides is high. /Sultan

[swdke]

I am interested in hearing from anyone about their lunch experience when touring with Denrus or Red October. If you stopped for lunch at a local restaurant, what was the food like? What was the cost? Is there a restaurant that you reccommend?

 

On our Red October tour, in order to maximize our time visiting the various sights, we packed our lunch both days with food from the ship. First day we ate while in the van going from one site to another. The second day, we had our packed lunch in a park at the Church of Spilled Blood.

[JodiBB]

Guess what? We ended up with the same restaurant menu as JodiBB! It was terrible -- and worse the menu for our lunch was preset. So we could not even make a selection from the restaurant menu. Maybe the kickback to the tour guides is high. /Sultan

I'm guessing it was the same restaurant too?? :eek: :rolleyes:

[Andee]

We ate at two very good restaurants when we toured with RO. The first morning, they showed us menus, so we could select in advance and not have to wait. The meals looked like large multi-course dinners, so we asked if it was acceptable for two people to share a meal--which it was. I ordered beef stroganoff in one restaurant and salmon in the other. Both were delicious.

[Jill_b]

One of the reasons I did not consider RO was that they would only take us to cafes or restaurants they had agreements with which mean they got commissions on what we would order. I've read many times in the city guides that restaurants that resort to paying for customers are not very good as a general rule.

I was on the Value Excursion with Denrus and we had lunch in a wonderful elegant 5 star hotel, the Astoria on one day and a Russian village appearing restaurant the other day that was really good, and a fun place. I exchanged email addresses with our waitress and we still chat.

 

When I was still thinking about a private custom tour, I asked about meals and got a very short list from RO that I looked up on dining guides and none were rated well or even listed. They told me that they only used these because "all other restaurants are unsafe and we feel responsible for our customers". If such restaurants as the Astoria are "unsafe" I'll take my chances and die in food heaven. I got the exact same wording as to why I could not book a canal cruise unless I guaranteed 20 passengers. I guess is 3 people are not safe but having 20 people are useful for walking to shore on their heads...the logic escaped me. That was also the reason I could not shop anywhere except their own store, because it was not safe to shop anywhere else. Luckily I did not book and the money I saved on 3 passengers let me by a beautiful set of china made by the Imperial china factory in St Petersburg

 

When I talked to Olga at DenRus about choices she said they had a long list of restaurants they had personally insepcted but although it was long, the number of quality restaurants was in the thousands and we were welcome to go to any of them. She told me about the restaurant inspection program where every restaurant has to pass monthly city health inspections and that the general level of sanitation and food quality was very high in St Petersburg. Reading in gourmet magazines confirmed what she said, it is consider a real foodie city with the best and oldest culinary institute in Eastern Europe. So I would suggest checking out some of the food web and restaurant web sites for recommendations. What type of food do you like? You should try Russian cuisine, I really like it when prepared well. One restaurant I am going to visit based on recommendations is 1913 God (which means "1913, the best year") on St Isaac Square for a little more formal Russian dining. Another place that got good reviews for fish that sounded interesting is "Russian Fishing", set in a beautiful park next to a lake in the city(based on the photos on the web and reviews). There was a long thread by someone living in St Petersburg you could look up from last year that had lots of personal recommendations and descriptions under the name "stanj". I used his list to create my list for my land based visit next month for 2 weeks. I will report back about eating in Russia because I am going to try them all.

[Westaussie]

Andee, six of us are booked with RO mid June and have both days at restaurants, do you remember the names of the ones you went to?

[VinTek]

We did a restaurant on our first day with RO -- Adamant, I believe it was. The restaurant was good, but not exceptional. About $15pp, if I recall.

 

On the 2nd day, we ate with a Russian family in their home. I'd read of others who ate with a retired aerospace engineer and her grown son, and this was what I more or less expected. Instead, we were served lunch by a retired ballerina (who still taught dance to make ends meet) and her daughter (then a 1st-year university student). The mother did not speak English, so our RO guide and the daughter did all the translation. I still correspond regularly with the daughter to this day.

[itsjb1]

Andee

 

 

What dining guides did you use to check up on restaurants?

[emeyers]

Several months ago I made an exhaustive search of restaurants recommended by other members of cruise critics, together with recommendations by several of the St. Petersburg tour companies. I then augmented the information through a Google search.

 

I then forwarded the information to our tour company http://www.alla-tour.com

 

She very kindly gave us the full menus available for lunch and will book the restaurants as part of our 2 day tour.

 

Russian House near Peterhof's area

 

Demidov restaurant

 

As I said, you can find pictures and further information on each of these, and other restaurants through Google.

 

Ellis

[freddiebud]

If you wanted to check other websites, go to chowhound.com. Select international and do a search for st. petersburg. These are folks that love to eat but not foodies. I use them all the time when traveling and find it quite reliable.

[Westaussie]

Thanks everyone - will do all of the above. As RO have their own list of restaurants to choose from, and I can check with them what they are, I thought an unbiased opinion of recommended restaurants would cut the search down!

[Andee]

itsjb1--I didn't check out the restaurants. I apologize if I said something that made you think I did.

 

Westaussie--one day we went to Adamant, and the other to Our Piter.

 

We figured that it would be in RO's best interest to take us to restaurants we would like, as we'd spread the word if they didn't. Plus, we thought it best to let them select the places that would be most convenient for the rest of our itinerary.

[Westaussie]

Andee - thanks for the restaurant and menu recommendations!! So if they are offered as being convenient places to our itinarary at least I have a head start to accept.