St. Petersburg Dinner Options Post Day Tour

Hello,

We are a group of 4 who will be in St. Petersburg in August. After our tour we've decided to stay in the city for dinner.

I've been looking at various reviews and would welcome input from anyone who has recently dined in SPB.

Some of our options are: Dom, Tsar, Noskva and Terrassa.

Thank you,

Leta

I could be wrong, but I don't think you just "stay in town", unless you have your own visa. When you are on the tour, you are covered by the tour operator's visa.

Unless you are from one of the somewhat short list of countries that Russia doesn't require visa for their citizens. As you state you are from California, that is unlikely.

We're touring during the day with Insider Tours, they are arranging for a driver to stay with us and return us to the ship in the evening. They've offered to make a restaurant reservation for us, we prefer to select our own dinner option.

We actually do have visas and will be in St. Petersburg next month. I did a lot of research on restaurants through Trip Advisor. You'll be more likely to find folks who have actually eaten at those places if you inquire on the St. Petersburg board there. Seems like most cruise passengers only eat lunch at one of a few places catering to large groups. I'll post a review after our cruise on Silhouette so you'll see where we decide to eat dinner.

Hello,

 

We are a group of 4 who will be in St. Petersburg in August. After our tour we've decided to stay in the city for dinner.

 

I've been looking at various reviews and would welcome input from anyone who has recently dined in SPB.

 

Some of our options are: Dom, Tsar, Noskva and Terrassa.

 

Thank you,

Leta

All your restaurant options seem to be very formal dining. There's absolutely nothing wrong with formal dining, but increasingly I'm finding that food at the top end is getting more and more international. With transportation able to fly ingredients to most major cities either same day or overnight, the chefs are bringing in all sorts of international ingredients and flavors. Ideas that are popular seem to get copied faster and faster in cities far from their place of origin. That means place-specific food is disappearing at the top end of the dining world.

A few years ago, after a land trip that included time in Paris, my husband and I felt very disappointed with our meals because of the internationalization and that experience has shaped our subsequent restaurant choices on travel. We're less inclined to go to the top tier in places and much more inclined to seek out authentic restaurants.

Using this standard -- and you may not care about my standard -- Tsar seems to come up the winner after reading the the Trip Advisor reviews.

If you go to the Trip Advisor site for Terrassa, across the top of the review, there is a list of the style food being served. Here's what is listed for Terrassa as they appear: Japanese, European, Asian, Russian, Eastern European, Central European, Sushi, and Fusion. I'm not focusing on the Russian/Eastern European/Central European cluster, but eating Japanese, Sushi, and Fusion isn't why I go out to eat in St. Petersburg.

Looking at the same list across the top of the review for Moskva I saw Sushi, European, Russian, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Japanese, and Asian. In fact, several reviewers mention the scope of the menu with praise saying in one typical example, "Menu includes all types of foods from Russian stroganoff to sushi and pizza."

Dom's TA listing includes the following three cuisines: European, Russian, Contemporary. The reviews are quite good, and service gets high marks, something which is often criticized in the Terrassa reviews, but AlanKR's review echoed my unhappiness with the idea of the internationalization of food.

Obviously, we haven't eaten at the specific restaurants you've asked about, but my point of view may be something you haven't thought about -- something worth considering. In your place, I'd certainly book at Tsar.

Hello,

 

We are a group of 4 who will be in St. Petersburg in August. After our tour we've decided to stay in the city for dinner.

 

I've been looking at various reviews and would welcome input from anyone who has recently dined in SPB.

 

Some of our options are: Dom, Tsar, Noskva and Terrassa.

 

Thank you,

Leta

I have dined at many restaurants and cafes in St. Petersburg. Where you wish to have dinner will depend on your tastes/budget. There are tons of great places to eat with every type of cuisine imaginable. From your list of options, I have tried only Tsar - (good food -Russian & International - and great atmosphere), Dom (contemporary Russian - excellent food and great atmosphere in old mansion) and Terrassa (good food - located at the top of an office center - international cuisine - nice terrace with great views overlooking Nevsky). Choosing among these 3, I would vote for Dom if I had only one evening to dine out in the city and wanted to splurge on great food in a lovely setting.

Among my favorites:

Percorso (Italian) - gourmet

Palkin (Russian, French) - gourmet

Stary Tbilisi (Georgian)

Bushe (sandwiches, pastries)

Pelmenya (traditional Russian)

Graf Suvorov (traditional Russian)

Zolotaya Rybka (fish)

Demyanova Ukha (fish)

Tarkhun (Caucasian)

Dickens (English style pub)

Shamrok (Irish pub)

Probably more options than you were looking for. :D

I did a lot of research on restaurants through Trip Advisor. You'll be more likely to find folks who have actually eaten at those places if you inquire on the St. Petersburg board there.

But, how do you separate the really good restaurants from the bad restaurants when they're both ranked highly on Trip Advisor?

For example, for Trip Advisor's list for top restaurants in LA, they include really good restaurants like Craft, Providence, Gjelina, etc...

But, on the same list, you also have places like Cheesecake Factory at #6, Bubba Gump Shrimp, Johnny Rockets, Hard Rock Cafe, etc...

But, how do you separate the really good restaurants from the bad restaurants when they're both ranked highly on Trip Advisor?

 

For example, for Trip Advisor's list for top restaurants in LA, they include really good restaurants like Craft, Providence, Gjelina, etc...

 

But, on the same list, you also have places like Cheesecake Factory at #6, Bubba Gump Shrimp, Johnny Rockets, Hard Rock Cafe, etc...

I don't just go with the rankings as I agree they can be very strange. I use it as a jumping off point and look at menus, professional reviews etc.

But, how do you separate the really good restaurants from the bad restaurants when they're both ranked highly on Trip Advisor?

Your criticism is spot on. Right now, the Trip Advisor system will rank a top quality restaurant like Craft and a branch of a Cheesecake Factory similarly if each has close to the same number of reviews and the darkened circles used in the review are similar. Not very meaningful.

If I truly want to stick with Trip Advisor -- and sometimes that is the only resource available for a recommendation --- I begin looking at the highest rated places by reading the italicized lead sentence which introduces each Trip Advisor review. Those give an useful capsule view of the review that follows.

Here are the first four lead sentences from the reviews of the Topanga Canyon Blvd branch of the Cheesecake Factory (randomly selected among the many LA Cheesecake Factories).

“Even though I do not care so much for corporate restaurants, my crew loves it.”

“The Cheesecake Factory is ok by me”

“Usually Excellent, This Time Disappointing”

“Great Happy Hour!”

Look at how much information I have from reading just four sentences. A quick skim lets me know whether I want to read more detailed reviews.

Here are the lead sentences of the first four reviews for Terrassa in St. Petersburg:

“beautiful view”

“Quality, View, Cosy and Delicious”

“Slow service and food average”

“Disappointing.”

I definitely wouldn't make a final decision based exclusively on Trip Advisor reviews for the very reason you've brought up. For St. Petersburg, a Google search turns up online access to Fodor Travel and The Telegraph (a UK newspaper), two places I've used in the past. (Both of these sites recommend restaurants in every price range.)

Out of curiosity, I spent some time figuring out whether there's any overlap between the Trip Advisor rankings and Fodor and The Telegraph. Fodor's has two different categories for Eastern European restaurants and Russian restaurants. Considering the restaurant names in both categories, there's no overlap with the any of the top 10 names on Trip Advisor. Only Palkin appears on both Fodor's French list and Trip Advisor's top 10.

The Telegraph site lists ten restaurants and, again, only Palkin makes this site and the Trip Advisor list.

So what's a traveler to do? Exactly what the OP did! Post on a port of call board, and, definitely, broaden the search to include other review sites.

Thanks everyone for your input. As others have mentioned, Trip Advisor is not the 1st place I'd look, the way they parse data is not the best, or even accurate IMO.

We'll definitely look at some of the restaurants listed below, read through guide books and blogs.