The list of restaurants named after a certain branch of agriculture, namely vegetable-growing, is increasing with a quickness – after Ogorod (Vegetable Garden), Klumba (Flower-Bed) and the recently opened Fazenda, Grabli (Rake) seems to be the latest to take on this trend. Like most vegetable-growing establishments of the restaurant kind, Grabli does not explain its choice of name: Someone just liked the word, I guess. From the street, the interior has a Central Asian feel to it: Everything is decorated in the Bukhara style.
My friend and I went to the restaurant not knowing what to expect. As soon as we entered the restaurant, we realized it was a self-service buffet. The waitresses wear straw hats, the chefs cook on large frying pans right in front of the customers and the customers have the opportunity to choose from and array of dishes. Personally, it reminded me of Benikhanu, while my friend thought it resembled the Latvian chain Lido. From a talk with the manager, we discovered that the pilot project of the Grabli chain by Moscow restaurateur Roman Rozhnikovsky was based on the Latvian chain Lido.
Customers at this family restaurant, which seats 400, can freely move around and choose the dishes and drinks they like. There are around 200 dishes: Main courses, soups, pancakes, fritters, sauces, pickles, fruit and vegetables. As we were taking things easy after an active workout, we mainly chose fruit and low-calorie foods since we wanted to feel healthy: Vitamin salad, the vegetable salad bar, fried eggplant with tomatoes and cheese, pancakes with cranberry, apple and banana filling, black-currant jam, salmon shaslyk and mors. All this cost us not more than 300 rubles. At the bar we ordered a glass of red wine each, which cost another 160 rubles.
It would be too much to say that we loved it, but also not quite right to say we didn’t like it. Of course, it is not a restaurant in the classic sense of the word, but also not a Soviet-era dining hall. A great deal of effort is required to achieve high quality, to make sure a restaurant offers truly home-cooked food, and is not just a snack bar with expensive service.
There is a small cafe by the entrance with very delicious pastries and deserts. Incidentally, unlike the disorganized menu, the desserts are very tasty and cheap – from 15 to 100 rubles. It’s worth coming here for them, especially for the appetizing and medium-sized cakes, which cost from 300 to 500 rubles.
The only thing we truly adored about Grabli was the design and atmosphere. They play music from the 1920s-1940s! We thought this was wonderful. The interior is also conceptual: The cafe is a pergola with an overgrown pond, the dining area is an old winter garden, full of artificial greenery, bird cages and lamps, while the beer bar on the second floor is a real attic full of antiques and old furniture. And it’s not just any old junk – the items are quite valuable. I wouldn’t mind taking some of the oak tables and solid oak chairs home with me!