Moscow-Delhi

«Moscow-Delhi» on Yermolayevsky Lane is a vegetarian café serving Indian cuisine, where the kitchen isn't hidden behind a wall but brought right out into the dining room. Guests see the whole process: dishes being washed, firewood being split, the stove being fired up, farm milk being reduced for desserts, vegetables being cut and flatbreads being shaped. At the entrance you're asked to take off your shoes — this isn't set up to feel like visiting a restaurant, but like coming over to someone's home. The interior was put together by hand by the owners, Galya and Johan Michael Bott, using reclaimed materials. The floors are laid from old boards, the doors and tiles once served in other houses, and the walls and ceiling are made of adobe clay. The team has none of the usual restaurant hierarchy — no chef, no waiters, no floor managers. The people working here come from Nepal, Côte d'Ivoire and France, and each of them takes on several roles at once. The format is based on the Indian dhaba — a street eatery with no menu, where you're served whatever was cooked that day. That said, at Moscow-Delhi nothing is fried, even though in India itself oil is used generously, and the dishes here aren't loaded up with heat. The average check is 1,000–3,000 ₽, and the easiest way to get there is from Mayakovskaya metro station.