Post-Perestroika Warrior - Passport magazine

Restaurant Review
Little Lamb
0 September 2009
text by Charles W. Borden
Baku native, and Los Angeles transplant
Shiraz Mamedov issued our first invitation
to Barashka, which he called his
favorite Moscow Azeri restaurant, claiming
that it does for Azeri cuisine what
Pushkin Café has done for Russian.
Barashka has two locations, on Novy
Arbat across from the Oktyabr cinema
complex, and on Petrovka. Both fall
under the Novikov umbrella, but like
most Novikov restaurants there is a
third party owner, in this case Rudolf
Movsumov. A few weeks later, at the invitation
of Georgian Timuri Lomsadze,
we returned, this time to meet Rudolf
in person.
The Novy Arbat location has a nice
covered summer terrace and Shiraz
secured a table on a nice summer evening.
Barashka is stylishly decorated
with pleasantly subtle Caucasus touches
of color, texture and fabrics, in contrast
with most other southern ethnic
restaurants that overdo the decorative
flourishes and costumes to the point
that they all appear alike. However, the
Novikov design trademark is also apparent
at Barashka – at Novikov’s restaurants
you will usually find masses of
identical objects – large glass jars full
of lemons, a huge basket of peppers or
cinnamon sticks, or a wall constructed
of simple uniform vases.
The Barashka menu has more than a
dozen pages of Azeri dishes with descriptions
appealing enough to invite as
many visits to try them. The choice was
difficult so we let Shiraz select his favorites
for the table. A plate of sliced veal
basturma was first out, quickly followed
by a large tray of sprigs of fresh dark
greens – purple basil, cilantro, mint, sorrel
and others – with very fresh cucumbers
and tomatoes (400r). The basturma
was a deep, dark veal with a thick spice
coating, semi-dried and cured with a
resulting spicy, powerful taste. For starters,
we had a selection of qutabs, thin,
flat and filled pastries. In our case we