i got an email from a sochi colleague of mine the other day. he's an american, and became a very good friend during our time over there. he and i and a few other friends kept a running list of restaurants and bars we wanted to try in moscow. i was determined to squeeze as much juice out of living there as i could. we taped the list to the wall next to his desk and anyone could add to it. turns out he kept that list, took it back to america with him, and he sent me a photo of it the other day. brought back a flood of memories!
R= restaurant, B=Bar, C=Cafe. we made it to most of them. but i never made it to Fat Cat, which i am sad about. it's a tiny italian cafe with a big ol' fat cat that hangs out inside. good italian was hard to find there, and supposedly that place was the real deal.
one of my fave places on the list was oldich dress and drink. a fantastic vintage-style bar/restaurant that sits below an over-priced yet very stylish vintage clothing shop. when the store closed for the night, they opened up a HUGE trap door int he floor that revealed a staircase down into the bar. the store had more pretension in it than one block of lorimer street in williamsburg, brooklyn. it had a birdcage that held a tiny parakeet dripping with attitude. but it also had fun hats.
another frequented dining establishment was delicatessen. and that was the scene of one of my most awkward moscow moments. one night a group of us ate there. we racked up a huge bill, which i put on my card, collecting the cash front he rest of the group. i signed the bill, we got our coats from the required coat-checks that are at every moscow restaurant, and we left! and then i remembered that i didn't tip AT ALL. now, it maybe didn't have to be such a big deal, as tipping was a fairly new convention in moscow. but i felt horribly guilty. like i was a nasty, greedy, stuck-up american tourist. and i spend a good portion (probably too much energy) of my time in any foreign land trying to be the OPPOSITE of what i think your typical american tourist is. so i was determined to make reparations. the next day i oriented my errands so i would be in the neighborhood of delicatessen. and i took a wad of cash there equal to the tip we should have left. and i used my best broken russian to explain that we ate there the night previous, and forgot to pay the tip. well, they thought i was saying we forgot to pay AT ALL, and looked up the bills from the night before, called over our waiter, and discovered that we had paid, so tried to tell me all was ok. however, i was not to be shooed away so easily. i kept insisting i owed them $, which confused them, and russians are not good with confusion, as confusion usually leads to embarrassment, and russians are definitely NOT good with embarrassment. it is the one emotion to be avoided at all costs. it got very awkward. the manager kept trying to back away, and then tried to apologize, which was humiliating for him and for me, and it was clear he just wanted me to go away cuz he didn't know what to do with me. i finally just shoved the 800 rubles into the manager's hand, and fled the scene. and tho it was extremely awkward, i felt good, that i had made reparations. however, i have no idea if that ever came across. does karma still work if one party has no idea that a good, right thing was done? i hope so.
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