Mela

Two floors, two completely different characters. Upstairs, the Archpoint bureau built a bright room with panoramic windows and terracotta details evoking a bohemian apartment somewhere on the southern coast. The lower level is the total opposite: dim lighting, emerald finishes, a dedicated bar, and the feeling of a place where conversation itself becomes part of the evening. The restaurant's name — Mela, "apple" in Italian — was turned by the concept's authors into a running motif: a symbol of temptation, discovery and contradiction that runs through both the interior and the cocktail list.

Our restaurant guide's team finds Mela equally well suited to a quiet dinner alone or a loud group — a place with a rare knack for never crowding the guest.

The menu is built on a Mediterranean base but doesn't stay confined to it. Brand chef Kirill Berger mixes Italian, Spanish and Asian logic, adding a delicate heat here, an unexpected accent there that flips a familiar flavor on its head. The massive brass oven at the center of the room is a working tool, not a decoration: it bakes the signature pizzas with truffle, mortadella or four cheeses, as well as Greek flatbreads that pair well with a plate of meze. Pasta dough is rolled fresh every day — the menu has more than ten options: cacio e pepe, casarecce with porcini, tagliatelle with Kamchatka crab or with alfredo sauce and truffle.

The oven's counterpart is an ice display of seafood. Wild sea bass, red mullet, Magadan shrimp, Spanish carabineros, three kinds of oysters and scallops sit on crushed ice — all part of the raw bar section, with the guest choosing how it's prepared. Among the hot dishes are striploin with pepper sauce and chimichurri, duck confit with corn risotto and truffle, and octopus in a pepper-and-feta sauce. Our restaurant guide's team rates the duck confit as one of the menu's strongest dishes, balanced and unfussy on the plate.

Our secret guests gave the dinner 8 out of 10 — for the kitchen's precision, competent service, and an interior design that manages to surprise on both floors. The dessert list closes the evening without pretense: a Pavlova with raspberry sorbet, a mille-feuille, and a warm galette with stewed plums — or an assortment of mini versions if you want to try everything at once.

The bar program is built with the same breadth as the kitchen: French crémants, Champagne, wines from the Old and New Worlds, and Russian labels that have already earned their reputation. The cocktail list is its own story: structured like a walk through a garden of ingredients, split into vegetables, fruits and berries. The apple is the star of several signature mixes, fittingly, for a restaurant whose concept began with it.