St. Petersburg - Church on Spilled Blood

The Hermitage - Winter Palace

The Small, Old, and New Hermitages

SS Peter and Paul Cathedral

St. Isaac's

Peterhof, Part 1

Peterhof, Part 2

Catherine Palace

Pavlovsk, Part 1

Pavlovsk, Part 2

Yusupov Palace

Menshikov Palace

Our Intinerary

Visas

Getting There

Hotels

Getting Around

Restaurants

  St. Petersburg - Restaurants  
Photo of St. Nicholas Cathedral, St. Petersburg
St. Nicholas Cathedral

We had a hard time with this.  We ate at two very expensive and very bad restaurants (the Davidov in the Hotel Astoria, and Palkin).  

There were a number of small restaurants near our hotel, the Astoria, but most of them had only Russian language menus and no one who spoke English.  Perhaps it's different in the summer, when there are a lot of tourists around, but the language barrier combined with the transportation problem and extremely cold weather, made dining a real problem.

We ended up eating mainly in hotels: the Borsalino Brasserie in the Angleterre twice, the Davidoff in the Astoria once, the Astoria Rotunda Bar twice, the Rossi in the Grand Hotel Europe twice.  One meal in the chic Remark Cafe down the street from the Astoria - do-able only because there was one waitress who spoke a little English, and even then it was difficult.

We tried a Greek restaurant near the Astoria once - Greek Taverne Ovlia on Bolshaya Morskaya.  The menu had pictures and English translations, so we thought we'd be okay, but when my husband found it impossible to order a glass of vodka, we gave up and left.  He kept saying Vodka, and they kept saying how much!  He keep saying and miming "a glass", but they didn't seem to get it.  There was a hostess downstairs who spoke English, but no one fetched her to help.

Our guide took us through the luxurious Russian Empire Restaurant in the Stroganoff Palace one afternoon (after our Peterhof tour), and we loved the atmosphere - a series of small dining roooms done in beautiful period decor.  The menu looked better than the one at Palkin (which gave me bad vibes from the start), but we had lost our taste for elegant St. Petersburg dining after that disaster and did not get to try the Russian Empire.  (Don't confuse this with the Stroganoff Yard, a little outdoor cafe in the courtyard.)

For a different viewpoint on St. Petersburg, see Tell The Truth Traveller Bob93_2's report.