The restaurant critic swims the Seto sea

Do you remember the bar-restaurant of the clothing brand Óckam, which climbed into catering on the already densely fed stretch of Kazanskaya Street between Nevsky and Gorokhovaya? Yes, back in 2024. Occam's razor, with complications. Óckam bistro, like Seto, followed a sound principle: better twenty seats that fill than three hundred that only work with quizzes, Philadelphia rolls and "ladies' Thursdays, 50% off". True, the tailors' room never filled and they closed soon enough. Which makes Alexey Mochnov's decision the more interesting: no more Son, but with MOA still running.

Seto Naikai is the inland sea of Japan, so the direction is clear. When most menus around town look alike, one this original is met with delight. Authorial, it seems to me, far more than Japanese. The motifs are there, yes. The choice of dishes is complicated but interesting. And uncomplicated: excellent food prices, so choosing is easy — but the drinks astonished me. Not even the figures themselves, the proportion. The author's skill, I believe it: cocktails from 900 ₽, but water at 650 ₽ with no other option — why so harsh? Tea from 600 to 800 ₽, beer, ONE of them, 700 ₽. In an "izakaya" format, repeated many times over, with insistent storytelling. Is there any proof of it? They also talk about plans for omakase: I don't interrupt, being a civilised man, but while announcing it the man points at a small bar. Just a bar. With no sushi station. How can that be the working place of a chef or a fish master? Not between the teas and the wines, surely? Wondrous are thy works.

A tiny place; the interior always comes out dense with impressions. Even a plain textured painted wall. There are many changes, but the word "many" doesn't work in these square metres. What I liked is that everything seems to have been done deliberately. They can tell you why and what for, they can carry the story of the masks on the wall — all the pluses of the most intimate little spot since the start of the year! Tiny: twenty covers, as they wrote, but in the daytime one of the two rooms is taken by a management meeting of six. In that room, seating twelve as far as I can tell, there is no sitting down any more: who disturbs whom more, I couldn't say. You know, what dissolves in a 300-seat place, even in an average restaurant, is startling here. By two in the afternoon the tables beside me and at the bar were taken: it has been a long time since I sat twenty centimetres from other guests' backsides. And the second surprise: for the first time in my life I see a lavatory without the slightest hint of a bolt or a lock. Broken ones I've met more than once, hidden ones too, but I always found them. Here the door runs on rollers, there is nowhere to hide a mechanism, everything is in plain view. Have guests really not asked since opening day?

The compliment from the kitchen arrived before the drinks — not the first time, but happily a rarity: they do try to keep to the rules. Smashed cucumbers of middling fluffy heat, an ideal heat to the marinade of the springy, healthy shiitake, and wood-ear mushrooms in a spicy ideal you won't find in a good Chinese restaurant these days. As a compliment — one of the best I've had lately. It sets you up. It warms you up!

Tea (600 ₽) with a splendid ritual: for the first time I see a stand like that and hear the story of "feeding the pet that changes colour". A ritual designed for a different restaurant, though: once on the table, this fairly large tray with its refill decanter leaves no room for any food. You have to squeeze up, because the dishes keep coming.

Tataki of yellowfin tuna with vegetable salsa and wasabi kizami (720 ₽). Delight from everything in turn and everything together: the colour of the fish flesh (and I go to many places, good ones included), the fineness and evenness of the millimetre tataki layer, and not a sauce so much as bright brightness — top marks! When the emphasis is on the product, which is very Japanese, yet the dish is composed. Small, but complete. And absolutely enough!

Salad with seared eel, cream, ramiro pepper and quinoa (950 ₽). How warmly and finely the grain is soaked — delight; and what the tenderest eel, I honestly can't remember one like it for years. Even the enemy of mankind, the cream sauce, doesn't spoil the impression: it sits in the far corner of the composition. I ate it with a spoon, which I recommend to you. If I'm not mistaken, no cook in the whole Illustrious Petersburg has put that much shiso leaf into a dish in all my years of watching. And before them nobody in our Illustrious city knew what shiso was.

Roll with salmon and pike caviar (1,150 ₽). A hard service failure. If they had warned me, even inelegantly, what it was, I would never have bought it. Not a roll — there is no rice, but genuine little salmon rolls with cream cheese alone, on thin crisps (sometimes written up as a "veil"). Real wasabi beside it, all the products good, and still: as though the worst and least loved parts of the people's Philadelphia had been gathered and the evil doubled. A sweet, childish, tasteless thing, and not even something to go with a stiff drink. I'd have scolded it as a starter, and I scold it here, in the same section as nigiri (real ones with rice, I hope) and hand rolls (real ones, I hope). And no, they don't give you soy sauce, which could at least have shaded that double-fat sweetness. Warn people, ask people, and preferably as though they were idiots: "You definitely understand what I'm about to bring, you won't be upset?" I'm sorrier for the produce than for my money.

Nomu-tom with seafood (940 ₽): the local variation of tom yum. Softer, very close to a creamy fish soup, with excellent balance and a well-filled small bowl. When there are more emotions than grams, it isn't expensive! And better eaten solo. Because instead of the classic rice they brought what looked like a child's milk porridge, sweet and not very pleasant: the worst idea in the trade this year. I asked. The answer: "We cook it risotto-style, on coconut milk." What for? It only spoils a beautiful dish with its morning yawn.

No main course — an hour from sitting down: in an empty restaurant that is a bit much, and after a twenty-minute gap from the previous dish, in an establishment of any class, someone should at least come over and reassure you: "We're cooking, we haven't forgotten, just a little longer." Tastes differ, so do plans and parking charges, but an hour is the same hour for everyone, and nobody likes it. All the more at lunch. And by then you don't much want it any more.

Hambagu of marbled beef with crisp oyster mushrooms and katsu sauce (850 ₽). The description ran something like: "meat minced several times, but like a tartare." "French, is it?" You brace for a beefsteak made of porridge, and it turns out sweet and homely, like the cat on the menu pages — thoroughly pleasant! Simple, yes, but the surroundings are very good, and the whole interactive, entertaining part rests on them. Unexpectedly for me, and for the yolk on top: YES!

Gyoza with prawn (750 ₽). After MOA, where I complained about two dumplings to a portion, Alexey parried: "But our produce is good." I believe him, I don't argue. But whether they heard me or not doesn't matter: THREE big dumplings. "One small step forward, by one dumpling; one giant leap for civilisation." Boris, 2006. Simply gorgeous filling — they must have found the right chop — remarkable dough, a skilled crisping of one side. A double yes, because the genre is hard and I praise only one gyoza in ten.

After I asked for the bill they informed me that "it is our custom to treat guests to a sorbet" — thank you, we're leaving already; five minutes earlier and I'd have thought about the offer, rather than after the guest has signalled the visit is over. As you'll have gathered from the moments spoken and unspoken, the service — which seems better than in 99% of the new places I crawl into, engaged, trying to add important parts to the concept — is the most debatable thing here. Small blunders, probably, spoil the impression, and this is so far the weakest part of the chain. For instance, right after the first course and until I left they stopped asking my opinion of the food. BUT! Halfway through the main the chef came out to ask how it was. A praiseworthy act in itself, my favourite thing in a restaurant of any level — except the guest is chewing and the food is going cold: "Your own work will be wasted; yes, I have a few notes, I'm ready, can you come later?" And then I told him what you are reading now.

There is one dessert on the menu besides the sorbets — mochi, and they are out of stock. So I'll finish. I waited, I didn't go during the test period, I very much wanted it to work out. It worked out well. Steadier, pleasanter, clearer than MOA. And here comes a recommendation, despite one dish out of six and a few little moments in the service.