From Moscow

Henry Hopwood-Phillips is momentarily distracted from the Russian home cooking by the comforting clutter of Mari Vanna

with love

ari Vanna recently celebrated its first birthday in London. The chain, only about six years old itself, has caused quite a stir amongst Russian expats and is beginning to lure in an even larger gentile crowd no doubt the allure of Prince Williams wall-signature (preserved for posterity by the modern equivalent of amber a polycarbonate sheet) has helped. Not that this place is truly a home from home, unless you lived in your grandmothers dacha on the outskirts of St Petersburg in the Romanov twilight years. However the restaurant has the magnetism of Raffles in Singapore: it stands for something more. The salad entrees were delicious, the ingredients perfectly balanced and the crockery it sat on, as thick as the slabs of dark rye bread that accompanied it: wonderful. In spite of the superlatives, I must say I found it quite indistinguishable from a typical Western salad but perhaps that is a tad harsh; salad is a dish that robustly withstands innovation, after all. The half-baked bronzecoloured chicken was cooked faultlessly. I was surprised that the tomato-pepper ramekin accompaniment to the fowl was quite so mellow and delicate. It was brilliantly bright and colourful. Normally not a dessert man and certainly not a souffl one at that, I was goaded into sharing a creation that was both, a creation designed by the exemplar tastebuds of supermodel,

the restaurant has the magnetism of Raffles in Singapore: it stands for something more

Natalia Vodianova. Perhaps one of the best sweets I have ever had, I ended up adopting a prisoner stance, doubling over the plate and letting the tea spoons ever so politely dance at an increasingly desperate pace with my companion. In one sense, however, this place isnt about the food. If one was wont to be uncharitable the interior could be described as Cath Kidston on Russian steroids, with knick-knacks everywhere and little things to catch the eye. Mari Vanna is not a culinary cupboard, rather a hickledy-pickledy domain. The resulting interior effect is, however, surprisingly spacious yet homely: there was certainly method in the madness. The toilets deserve a review of their own. I was told that the loudspeakers in there played Russian fairy-tales, if so be warned that Russian fables seem quite emotionally intense. As I polished off proceedings with my final homemade strawberryvodka infusion shot, that posed as a respectable digestif, I came to the conclusion this place was neither a home from home for Russians nor a highly affected showpiece for the glossy people, it was something much more appealing it was alive with a life of its own. 116 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7PJ, 020 7225 3122, www.marivanna.co.uk

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