Restaurant "Mindal" Opens in the Evropeisky Mall

Just a week ago, in the Evropeisky mall on Kievsky Station Square, a new café opened from celebrated Moscow restaurateur Alexander Rappoport. It had barely opened before it announced itself as yet another jewel in the crown. "Mindal" is a café of southern Azerbaijani and Iranian cuisine. The capital has plenty of restaurants serving Azerbaijani cuisine, but very few of them feature dishes common in the southern regions of Azerbaijan, and Iranian dishes hadn't been served anywhere at all until now.

Alexander Rappoport decided to open his new brainchild in a special spot — a space whose walls are literally steeped in the spirit of the East, where a family café serving Azerbaijani cuisine had operated for many years before. As a tribute to that history, the restaurateur decided to keep the name.

But the interior was completely transformed. Designers from bureau AR-1 handled the interior decoration, with an emphasis on Persian carpets. The interior holds plenty of real carpets, as well as installations that evoke them — the wall behind the bar counter, for instance, is done that way. On the ceiling, wooden structures resembling a hand-weaving loom are installed, with colored ropes woven into them. Even the chandelier is upholstered in carpet. Shelving packed with ceramic pieces, intricate clay chandeliers, decorative cushions, and even tableware decorated with traditional Caucasian patterns all send the viewer back to Azerbaijani folk crafts.

Chef Fuad Aliyev runs the kitchen. The menu is rich, as in all of Rappoport's other restaurants, but at "Mindal" it's unique. Here they serve pistachio kuku, walnut lavangi made from kutum, a fish found in the Caspian Sea, sudak syrdak, and a spicy chicken chikhirtma. Despite the intricate-sounding names, the food is very easy to understand. Kutum lavangi, for instance, is stuffed fish, while sturgeon buglama is fish steamed with a generous amount of herbs, dried cherry, cherry plum, and dried apricot.

What Caucasian cuisine could do without shashlik and lyulya kebab?! At "Mindal" they're made following 12 different recipes: lamb, sturgeon, and, for those wanting something truly exotic, lamb marinated in a mix of Persian tea and pomegranate juice. You can also order pilaf — Baku-style lamb pilaf with dried fruit, for instance, or another kind: 5 varieties are on the menu in total.

Persian (Iranian) cuisine is represented by several kinds of stew called "khoresh." Compared to the plain stew more familiar to Russians, khoresh differs in that the meat is braised with fruit and berries. At "Mindal" you can try lamb khoresh with peaches, or chicken khoresh with pomegranate and berries.

Among the more familiar Caucasian dishes, you can choose mini dolma — small meatballs, each wrapped in a grape leaf, served with matsoni — or khinkali.

To wash down all this Eastern abundance, sommelier Elena Kapanelli recommends genuine 20-year-aged Azerbaijani cognac "Shirvan," or an Azerbaijani wine — the wine list features many varieties.

For dessert, guests are offered traditional Eastern sweets: halva, baklava, shekerbura.

"Mindal's" indoor dining room seats 48 guests at once, with another 64 able to be seated on the veranda, draped in greenery. A pleasant mix of Iranian house music plays in the background during lunch or dinner, rounding out the sense of the East.