Insider

The interior sets the tone from the first glance: walls of rammed earth, a ceiling with imitation relief — all part of a single statement about sustainability and the future. At the center of the room is a bar station developed by the Behind the Bar design studio exclusively for this project. The design has no equal anywhere in the world: it's built so that a guest can sit right behind it and become part of the process, not just an observer at the counter.

Our guide's team says this isn't just a bar but a genuine laboratory, the kind of place you want to come back to.

Behind the glass wall is Insider Lab, where the team, led by Alexander Shatrov, works on new flavor and aroma solutions. Zero waste isn't just a slogan here: leftovers from drink production become soap, candles and aromatic elements that live right inside the bar. This approach is built into the project's philosophy at the level of detail, not just words.

A story of its own is the Negroni trolley, created together with the French manufacture Baccarat. The trolley is dedicated to a single cocktail: the classic Negroni is wheeled to the guest anywhere in the room, and the guest chooses the individual components of the drink and the shape of the crystal glass right there in the process. Baccarat is a manufacture with a 250-year history, whose pieces once graced the tables of French royalty; here they become part of a living cocktail ritual.

The menu pairs original cocktails with a small snack list. Among the items guests single out: a halibut starter with pickled quince, chicken pâté, mushrooms with potato mousse and truffle, and a Japanese dry made with gin, matcha, rice and sake — light and fresh, said by reviewers to recall green tea. Our undercover guests rated it 9 out of 10 for the cocktail, for precision of flavor, unconventional presentation, and the sense that every drink is designed as a standalone object.

This bar-laboratory on Sretenka is a project where the experience matters more than the number of items on the menu. The immersion starts with the greeting: the team explains and shows how everything around you works. There are plans for a bartending school and guest bartending. Insider already feels like a place with its own language, not just another cocktail address in the city.