By Chris Graeme
Running up and down Nevsky Prospect and darting in and out of shops can leave you not only shattered, but also pretty hungry.
And at lunch time, when you don't always fancy forking out 200,000 roubles on a meal, it's refreshing to know there's a reasonably priced restaurant which will more than adequately satisfy the appetite.
Nevsky 40 is a small art-nouveau style restaurant with a regal history.
The premises, built between 1794 and 1798, used to be a high class bakery owned by a certain Mr Abrikosov, purveyor to the Russian imperial family.
Today it's a more modest German restaurant sporting the motto "eat, drink and be merry."
The accent is naturally on German cuisine, but there's an extensive menu offering Russian, Italian and Asian food with an in-house speciality for crab and seafood.
The premises is staffed by an army of extremely polite waitresses who show you to a table on entering and hand you the menu, which is written in English, German and French.
The starters include tomato and oxtail soup, both at 8,000 roubles but we went for the vegetable soup, at 12,000 roubles, which contained beans, onions and other unidentifiable ingredients. The soup was light and proved an excellent starter leaving room for a second appetizer -- seafood cocktail salad at 22,000 roubles.
This attractively presented platter was almost a meal in itself with a generous portion of rice surrounding a heap of baby prawns, squid, mussels, cockles and pieces of white fish. The whole was garnished with black olives.
Also on the starter menu was crab soup at 17,000 roubles, Peking soup at 8,000 roubles and herrings in either mustard or mushroom sauce at 7,000 roubles.
Looking around the room one can see this is a favorite haunt for the middle-aged German and American businessmen and tourists who mingle unperturbed between new Russians in their classic burgundy felt jackets, crew-cuts and the obligatory -- yes! you guessed it -- mobile phone.
The main courses were varied and international with all the dishes around 20,000 roubles. Only the Rindfleisch filet steak jumped to 48,000 roubles.
Traditional German sausages weighed in at 20,000 roubles while the spaghetti Bolognese came at an economical 12,000 roubles. Ragout fin was 20,000 roubles, tortellini Gorgonzola was 13,000 roubles and ravioli 9,000 roubles.
I decided to go German and selected the ham and eggs, which turned out to be a fried egg on a bed of chipped potatoes and diced ham. Tasty, filling, somewhat water-logged but hardly adventurous.
My dining companion went in for one of the eight available pizzas which were great. The salami pizza at 21,000 was hot and spicy and covered with sausage, tomato, olives and delicious melted cheese. We could have chosen from a list of mushroom, vegetable and Bolognese, all at 18,000 roubles, or have taken the plunge for the fruits of the sea (frutti di mare) pizza at 21,000 roubles.
Surprisingly the Russian dishes were the most expensive items on the menu with Solyanka at 35,000 roubles, Pelmeny at 33,000 roubles and bliny (pancakes) with caviar at 35,000 roubles.
The restaurant decor is plain, simple but comfortable with cream vaulted ceilings and walls adorned with tasteful pictures of country scenes and flowers.
Dark wooden German-style benches with upholstered cushions --those booth-like sofa-benches that go on for ever -- run along the walls with each table served by soft, art-nouveau style lamps.
The simple but attractive atmosphere is marred only by strange, Titanic-looking silver ventilation pipes incongruously running along the ceiling, which look as if they have been covered in cooking foil.
The sweets were somewhat limited in choice and consisted of a fluffy but rich chocolate cream cake -- more like a mousse -- at 10,000 roubles, nut cream cake at 10,000 roubles and a delicious cheesecake at 10,000 roubles.
We rounded off our meal with coffee and cream at 12,000 roubles although tea was 7,000 roubles. Interestingly enough the drinks in this joint are often as much as the meals!