Rusty Rat & Pizza

Rusty Rat & Pizza is the fourth venue from the Underdog team, led for more than twelve years by Roman Uzhakin and Pavel Kosov. The concept is built on a clash of two urban mythologies: New York's Italian neighborhoods and the Brooklyn street spirit. The name is a deliberate irony on the image of a subway rat — the same one from the viral Pizza Rat meme. Rusty Rat doesn't aim for glossy perfection, and it says so openly, which is exactly what makes the place feel alive.

Our restaurant guide's team finds the honesty of form here disarming: a handsome interior and an underground philosophy don't clash but complement each other.

The menu's semantic center is Brooklyn pizza, understood as a collective image rather than a strict canon. The dough ferments for 48 to 72 hours, and the pizza is baked as a personal pie, about 25 centimeters across, sized for one person. The shape is deliberately imperfect: hand-craft matters more than symmetry. The crust comes out puffy, with characteristic dark charring — a nod to Neapolitan tradition, reinterpreted through a New York temperament. Classic items — the Pepperoni Diabolo and the Margherita — sit alongside an Untraditional section, where tomato sauce gives way to crispy Lao Gan Ma chili or pineapple kimchi with Tambov ham in the Pineapple Express.

Pizza isn't the only reason to come here. Italian-American classics are represented by a chicken schnitzel in alla vodka sauce, a substantial Reuben sandwich, an Italian wedding soup, and a matcha-and-raspberry tiramisu. This is a culinary restaurant in the center of Moscow that doesn't take itself too seriously — and that reads through in every line of the menu.

The bar side is built on the same logic: Brooklyn vibe with an Italian accent. A Tomato Spritz, a bold Pickle Street on tequila with cucumber brine and agave, a dessert Pistachio Martini — the cocktail list moves from light fruity-herbal mixes to dense, smoky combinations with a complex bittersweet finish. The classics are served with original nuances, neither overloaded nor oversimplified.

The interior is a collage of the team's personal impressions from trips to America. Skateboards, street signs, tomato-sauce cans and other New York details assemble the space without museum sterility. Inside is a small Rusty Grocery corner: American and Italian sauces, pasta, anchovies, hot honey — products hard to find in a regular store. As evening falls, the space shifts tone: candles on the tables, dim lighting, a slower rhythm. Dinner here in the center of Moscow easily stretches into a whole evening.