Gabriel S.
Yelp
This pseudo-Russian restaurant has been around for 29 years. I'd been here before once but since it's closing at the end of November I decided to swing by again twice.
Why do I call this place pseudo-Russian?
Simply, it dates from the era where Hainanese-style Western Food was widely accepted as an accurate representation of "Western" food. So you have many items that seem Russian at first glance but are really (presumably) a Hainanese's idea of what Russian food would be. On my first visit, I'd judged that maybe 5% of the menu seemed Russian. There are dishes such as steak a la russe (which just seems to be steak with mushroom sauce), shrimp cocktail (an Anglo dish) and Chicken a La King (another Anglo dish).
For the bread we got one roll each. Except that these weren't even the mini imitation baguette kind of roll but rather a totally soft, slightly glazed and sweet Chinese-style soft bread. Served with SCS butter.
The Borscht soup was one of the highlights of this place. I've had red borscht whose colour came from beetroot. I've had pink Lithuanian borscht. Hell, I've even had the Hong Kong borscht which lacks beetroot but is at least red. This was a dark brown colour, which research reveals does not seem to correspond to any known borscht variant. That said there was a robust beef taste, and there was a large piece of beef and another of potato, as well as chunks of green pepper in it, with a generous dollop of sour cream.
The onion soup is really good - rich, strong and oniony. But the bread on top had the diameter of the Communion host. And was not much thicker to boot. It was like a token piece of toast with some powder.
The egg millionaire was not very nice (egg and bacon). And I was apprehensive about eating it because it was served in eggshells. The eggshells had a similar colour to the bacon, and I saw fragments of eggshell about to come out on the edges. Luckily I didn't eat any. I think. It was served on tomato, cucumber and shredded pickles, which looked really sad (though the pickles were not bad - crunchy and a little sweet)
They had mushrooms stuffed with smetana. The mushrooms were topped with a rather dry minced meat and were served with a creamy sauce. However they lacked flavour, and even the sauce didn't help much.
I've also tried the beef and pork shashliks. They were reasonable cuts of meat served on a hot plate and wasn't bad, being quite juicy. However all the pictures of Russian shashlik I can find online show chunks of meat on a skewer - as opposed to the long pieces of meat I saw (it comes on a skewer but is slid off it before serving).
The shashlik was served with "Russian salad". Which turned out to be slices of boiled egg, tomato, cucumber and onion, with small scoops of pickles and potato salad. All these ingredients were separate instead of being mixed together as a salad.
Pozharsky chicken was interesting - pan-fried chicken with a sour butter sauce. It was only slightly warm and not very crispy. We waited a while so perhaps they forgot about it for a while. The wedges it was served with were not freshly fried also.
There was also mushroom stroganoff which tasted okay. Nothing special, either way.
The steak a la russe was a normal steak with mushroom sauce. It was quite tender.
One aspect where Shashlik stands out is tableside service for some dishes, which is a nice novelty. We experienced this with our Cherry Jubilee: a waitress put butter in a saucepan, added in whipped cream and pitted cherries, and poured in liquor to light the pan. Everything was served with vanilla ais krim (cheap Malaysian-style palm oil ice cream). Cheap ice cream aside this dish was actually pretty good - the rich butter complemented the cherries and their liquid well.
The second time I came the Baked Alaska was out (boo) so I had brandy butter pancakes, which was also prepared by the table. They were alright.
For the Borscht, the mushrooms, a pork shashlik, 2 mushroom stroganoffs, a steak a la russe and a Cherry Jubilee, I paid $174.20, which wasn't cheap. Especially given that the portions were not big.
The restaurant was also rather hot, but the premises are quite old (and so is the shopping centre) so that is not unexpected. And the elevator music that played at night was irritating.
Basically, just come here for the nostalgia, table service or if you can't stomach full blown Russian food. Or the desserts (there's a reason the menu asks you to order a main course and not just have soup and desserts). If you want real Russian food, go to Buyan at Duxton Hill. Though of course it is even more expensive.