The restaurant critic explores the Dizengof/99 district

Not many memories. I had to re-read myself. A year ago the restaurant got a recommendation. They were so keen on the Moscow crowd that they took the cursed room of six previous places — six within my own observation — and I can't say they charmed me. I'll note only how quiet they have been by any measure all this time: the cafe barely turns up in my information field at all. Either everything is so very fine that there's no point in publicity, or things inside aren't going well? I've heard both. Better to look once. Twice.

In the first five minutes almost everything became clear. There is no gathering of bosses on the sofas in the middle, the way I remember it, but the feeling is again "the hipsters are having a rest". Somewhere. Nobody in the room. Not behind the bar, not in the room. Nobody at all. I see one table of guests, and that's it. I stood at the entrance. I waited. If it weren't for that one occupied table within sight, I'd have been sure I had barged into a place that hadn't opened yet. And it had been "working" for two hours and change. Opening at ten. They appeared. But the style, loose and relaxed to the last degree, stayed with me right through to the bill.

Naturally there are no changes to the interior — it's young. Good light in the corner room and deliberately dimmed in the second one; fashionable seats on the window sills, of course, and both times I had to settle there. And even so I liked the setting more than last time. Last time was fussy, riding on the hype, with a "passing through" mood — or, to put it fashionably, a snack-bar mood. The waiter started well but surprised me at once: "I've worked here three months, they always told us our tea is half a litre." I show him: the menu says 700 ml. A trifle, but it shows the attitude. Then they brought me somebody else's dish: a pity, I didn't photograph it, didn't manage a bite. Otherwise, over two visits, they had learned the compositions of the dishes, the upselling was not excessive and to the point, and everything was fairly precise. Even the requested pacing of courses was respected in five cases out of six! They just need to watch the room a little better — not a little, six times better.

Instead of last year's roomy, convenient two-page menu that showed you the whole picture at once, there is now a complicated, muddled notebook: by the time you get from the breakfasts, through the drinks, to the eighth fragment of the main courses… For the total renewal, even with strong simplification, we praise them — and we don't: no lamprey, no fish soup. A menu on an ordinary office paperclip I meet again for the first time. Perhaps it's a feature — the sort of thing that says look how simple we are — but the menu has to be opened in both directions, and the clip hops amusingly left and right. A trifle? Setting aside the six-line booklet for the Tyumeneva/Glushkov breakfast festival, the menu is the right size, with comfortable prices, and probably reflects the general trend. With experience. Coffee from 250 ₽, lemonades 410 ₽, beer from 400 ₽ for 0.4, cocktails at 700 ₽, the same as wine. Ask, and the water is free.

Salad with chicken (590 ₽). The lower half of the dish is decidedly short of the sauce sitting on top. Beneath excellent chicken, coloured with flavour, lies a completely undressed mix, big pieces of fresh cucumber, cabbage, onion, a tomato that isn't embarrassing. All of it good, I ate it with great pleasure — but either give twice the sauce (and ask the guest to toss it as you serve), or dress the bottom separately with an oil dressing. A good dish.

It hasn't gone up in a year — thank you for that, "Classic shakshuka, house recipe" (570 ₽). A strange showing for the most titular, most thematic dish of the whole concept. Good presentation, correct. Even if it looks nothing like the guests' photographs or the ones on the site. And then… The pita is warmed, but around the rim so dead that you take it for a ring of dried crust — I dropped it at once. Two almost-correct eggs; the white could have had another half-minute to firm up out of its translucence; around them something closer to tomato sauce than stewed vegetables: few pieces, you have to hunt for them in the mass. No heat, only three rings of chilli: you eat them separately, they don't colour anything. One milligram of herbs, and to me that is an important part of the dish — in the photographs there are dozens of times more! So the Moscow lot do understand how it should be done? Edible, probably not the worst in town, I've eaten bigger parodies — but boring and wrong. I was sort of warned, but damn it, this is the "classic", the "house" recipe, some special version, and am I not to look for the features of the dish in an "only here" reading of it? What was that? Rubbish.

Beetroot soup (390 ₽) with chickpeas, Jewish pickled cucumbers and baby potatoes. A beetroot soul rather than a decoction, as though chard tops had gone into the work; the whitening makes it ordinary, the little cucumber tickles, and the chickpeas are the real star among all beetroot soups. Unique. Bliss, not Haifa. That earns forgiveness for five per cent of the service crew's blunders, before and after.

Israeli bowl at 900 ₽, the one that has "not changed in ten years with us". In the Capital, apparently. Yet there's no "HIT" mark on the bowl "with turkey pastrami, beetroot hummus and quinoa". There's a whole carousel in there. And how good it all is, separately and together. The falafel turned up, quite perfect; pieces of mango I first took for peach; a salad of three vegetables; two sauces — tahini and amba on top. I went to the site to see what that thing beside it was — delivery menus often list the composition — and there the description is different: beetroot cream and hummus. Who is right? The discrepancy doesn't matter: I forgave another five per cent of the "service" blunders.

Lyulya Napoleon with matbucha (890 ₽) looks like a fashion model. Looks like "well done me for choosing it". A rectangle in which good, serious mince is layered with flaky tortilla. In a ratio of about one to three, I'd say: original, appetising, pleasant. Yes, the spicing is completely level — not bland, but not a gram beyond that, and not a single extra shade was sent out of the kitchen with the lamb. And with unleavened bread inside, you understand, it is diluted; it needs even more colour. A superb sauce, and after bathing it in that I solved the colour problem myself. Yes, a dish I'd repeat.

Malabi with pistachio and rose (350 ₽): not at all what they describe. More a pleasant cream that never set like a panna cotta: you take a spoonful and it flows back down. I'm not scolding the dessert in the least — rather the work with the staff and the wording. Tasty. Light, not cloying, interesting, with a pleasant milkiness. Yes.

Like a holiday resort. One dirty plate stands for five minutes, the last one for two times five: the neighbouring table got a visit, thirty-five centimetres from me, and still no catching anyone for the bill. I walked around the room, to the lavatory and back. Looked about. Attracted nobody's attention. The service isn't bad, there is simply far too little of it for the four characters working the room on a weekend! Naturally, twelve minutes later the caught member of staff couldn't care less about impressions: hands over the terminal in silence, walks away in silence.

And yet it's astonishing. Within twenty daytime minutes after me the place filled to about two thirds; half an hour later the sofa was taken too. I say this not about success but about focus and appetite for work, the opposite of the slackness I saw the whole time. This is not a sleepy empty cafe on the outskirts where you can doze and doze. Here you have to work. There is someone to work with. There is a point in working. Is there a manager? Expensive Zelensky soap in the washroom is not enough. Not enough.

One case in a hundred for me: I spat on my own rule — try to see two shifts on different days and never say "hello again" — but it became so interesting to see how the place is run that I went back the same evening. Oh! Met at once, seated; this time the manager was not "busy". And the girl who took the payment asked my opinion afterwards. And promised to pass on everything listed above! And I believe her! An interesting day it turned out to be.