Where in St Petersburg can you feast in imperial splendor and not have to pay a king's ransom? The answer is the Nikolai.
The Nikolai is a restaurant with a difference, since here you dine in genuine regal surroundings for the restaurant is situated in what was once a palace.
It is located within the House of Architects which was built for the nobleman Count G. Golovin in 1835. By the end of the 19th century its occupant was the famous Russian historian and foreign minister A. Polovtsov and to this day it retains the informal name Polovtsov House.
The menu offered in the exquisite chandeliered, oak-panelled dining room is French haute cuisine but with an international flavor.
And a three-course meal need not set you back more than $20 per person. My dining companion and I arrived early in the evening and had almost the entire restaurant to ourselves. Apart from the babble of a lone couple sitting opposite us, the only sound to be heard was the voice of Witney Houston piped over the room and the voices of our attentive waitresses.
I started off my evening's gastronomical voyage with a rich, creamy mushroom soup at $6 while my dining companion went for a taste of the sea with the shrimp soup at $7.
While engaging in conversation we had the chance to admire the sumptuous, classical interior of the restaurant and later peek at some of the other rooms. The most interesting is the Golden Room which is covered by different types of marble. Then there is the library which is done out in Louis Quinze style, the stunning main entrance and guest room with its bow window and the former boudoir.
The oak dining room, once the exhibition room, dates from the 1860s when it served as the great library. Looking around one can admire the turtle-shell inlaid doors, the intricate balconies and the beautiful marble stove which is decorated with two statues made by Florentine craftsmen. The most amazing feature of this room is the rare, hand-painted leather wallpaper which dates from the 19th century.
After pondering the menu I went for a thick, tender filet steak seasoned with peppers at $22 in a light basting sauce. The steak was, literally, mouth-watering and melted on contact. Cooked to medium-rare perfection, my only criticism was that the pepper had been somewhat over-done.
My companion chose to follow fish with fish and went for succulent, grilled rainbow trout at $19 in a creamy mushroom sauce and served with boiled potatoes.
We could have ordered local white wine at $8 a bottle or even French wine at $23 but opted instead for fresh, mineralized Finnish spring water at around $2.
Warm, soft white rolls and butter patties were brought with the meal. My dish came with chipped potatoes but both dishes were richly garnished with side-salad which took on an almost sculptural quality in the way it had been artistically arranged onto the plate.
Had we had the room, we could have complimented our meal with any one of the six main salads available from between $8-$10, including Greek salad, Spanish salad and even smoked fish salad.
Other tantalizing dishes on offer from the extensive menu included grilled chicken with Roquefort sauce at $11, various German-style schnitzels from between $15-$18 to beef a la St Moritz at $16 and entrecote steak at $20.
However, we hadn't consumed so much that we wouldn't be able to squeeze in a selection of sweets from the dessert trolley. I plumped for the ice-cream Fantasia at $6, which was more like a peach Melba with its peach slices and lashings of whipped cream, while my dining companion tucked into chocolate pie with vanilla cream at $5.
We rounding off our excellent meal with coffee and cream at $2.