Maya

Bolshaya Nikitskaya is rich in Lucky Group restaurants, and Maya is the wildest of them, literally. Here everything answers to fire: the heat of the coals, thick smoke, and hours of waiting for an ingredient to reach the right point. Australian chef Tom Halpin, who worked at Copenhagen's Noma, brought ancient cooking techniques to Moscow and built a complete concept around them. Glenn Ballis, who oversees the culinary direction of the whole group, served as concept chef.

Our guide's team sees Maya as more of a culinary spectacle than an everyday restaurant.

Natalia Belonogova of the NB-Studio bureau turned the 140-seat room into a set for a film about a distant continent. Volcanic rock, raw wood, wrought iron and ethnographic textiles weave into a space with not a single straight line — every element is handmade. One wall is fully dressed in dried flowers, evoking the feel of a savanna. Besides the main room, there's a wine room, a couple of bar areas, and a dessert station in full view of guests.

The menu reads like a guide to fire techniques. Roasted grapes are held over the coals overnight and served with stracciatella; shrimp are seared with smoking rosemary and juniper. Chicken is slow-cooked over flame for about three hours and served in an unusual way — with the claw left on, in keeping with the primal style. A leg of lamb is fixed to a metal cross and roasted Argentine-style for over eight hours. Among the starters, a ceviche with tropical fruit stands out, and trout is brought whole, head-on, with its own tartare. The flavors are direct and honest — there's no hiding behind complicated sauces here.

Palo santo burns in the bar area, and the cocktail list heads to Latin America. Head bartender Maxim Gorelik mixes pisco with fermented ingredients, adding corn milk and agave syrup. The non-alcoholic options deserve a mention too — two kinds of tepache and alcohol-free takes on classic recipes. Our undercover restaurant critics rated it 7 out of 10 for dinner and 7 out of 10 for breakfast. Maya made it into the guide as a place with powerful energy, visited not for a quiet dinner but for the experience.