Where to Dine

In Moscow nowadays, there is good eating for high Bolsheviks, bureaucrats and army & navy brass. Grandest restaurant is the Hotel Moskva's (see cut); it gets out-of-season cucumbers from Stalin's own hothouses. Not quite as good, but better-known to Americans, is the dining room of the Metropole. Then there are the smaller, more intimate restaurants, chic and very expensive, with cuisines deriving from Russia's exotic outlands.

Last week, a new luxury restaurant, the Ararat, opened. Like the Baku and the Uzbekistan, both fine eating & drinking places, it is an imitator of Communist Moscow's original luxury restaurant, the Aragvi.

Dagger Dance. The Aragvi is named after a famous swift river in Soviet Georgia, and its cuisine is Georgian and Caucasian. Specialties: shashlyk (broiled spitted lamb), pilaf (a condiment-hot concoction of lamb and rice) and satsivi (white meat of turkey in Georgian nut sauce, served cold).

Americans who have been to Moscow in the past decade think of the Aragvi as a sort of Soviet Stork Club. It has a splendid entrance on Soviet Square, a good Georgian orchestra which plays on a balcony, and a Caucasian dancer in traditional warrior uniform. In the big main hall there is an open space for patrons to dance; around the sides are private dining rooms. The best private room is on the upper level, facing the orchestra. (In this room have wined & dined a long list of distinguished and relaxing Amerikantsy running from Harry Hopkins to Wendell Willkie to Walter Bedell Smith.)

In the Aragvi, a good meal costs 100 to 175 rubles ($25 to $43) a head, depending on the amount of vodka and reddish Caucasian champagne consumed. Monthly pay of an average Russian is about 600 rubles.

Happy Day. Last week's newcomer restaurant, the Ararat, is operated by the government of the Armenian S.S.R., which has spared no efforts to outdo the Aragvi. The best cook in the Armenian capital has been brought to Moscow. Armenian wines have arrived to stock the Ararat's cellar.

Reports from Moscow have it that the Aragvi, perturbed, is sharpening up its cuisine and service. Its patrons, the middle-upper Communists are said to be still loyal but at the same time pleased with the new competition.

What with the current upper-class Bolshevik prosperity, it looks as though the Aragvi, together with the Ararat and the others, will all be packed with heavy spenders. As Stalin said in the '30s, "Life is getting easier, life is getting happier."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.