Ikra

"Ikra" on Bolshaya Nikitskaya became the third in the lineup after Plyos and Sochi — and the most ambitious. The White Rabbit Family restaurant alliance built a format here honed on the banks of the Volga: sixteen seats around a U-shaped table, an open kitchen an arm's length away, and a chef who runs the evening like the director of their own play. Before every new run, the team spends months talking to historians, ethnographers and farmers, to tell the story of a place and the people who once lived there through a plate.

Our secret restaurant critics acknowledge: the tasting-set format isn't a choice for every evening.

The repertoire is shaped by five chefs from the alliance. Vladimir Mukhin runs the set "A Whole Life Is Caviar" — a meditation on the fate of Russia's signature delicacy — and in "The Last Supper" builds an immersive gastro-play tracing the stages of accepting the inevitable. Anatoly Kazakov imagines, in "The Silk Road," a Russian cuisine shaped by the influence of the East instead of the West. Likarion Solntsev breaks down, in "The Taste of History," how specific ingredients changed the fate of civilizations. Denis Lim opens up the world of Nikkei, a hybrid of Japanese and Peruvian tradition. Gleb Shelomanov, who runs the kitchen's day-to-day work, put together "The Big Score" from recognized hits of the world's best restaurants. A separate story is the Dream Team: rare evenings where several chefs join forces and create a one-of-a-kind menu each time.

The setting is deliberately understated: brick, dim lighting, minimal distraction. All the attention goes to the kitchen, the ingredients, and the dialogue with the chef. Tables here aren't booked — tickets are bought, like at a theater. The experience depends on the specific evening and the specific chef, so two visits can turn out completely different. Any set is best paired with a good wine — that way, each chapter opens up more fully.

Our restaurant guide's team rates it 9 out of 10. For anyone who wants to try high gastronomy in a chef's-table format, Moscow's "Ikra" remains one of the few places where it's executed at a world-class level. The one caveat: if you've already been to the Plyos version, the capital's take is more of a scaling-up of a familiar format than a fresh surprise.