EM

The room at restaurant EM is built around an English cast-iron AGA stove — it never cools down, not even for an hour, and remains the space's semantic center. The interior was created by architect Mikhail Barkhin: rather than muffle the building's history, he exposed its layers — old surfaces, objects that could have belonged to a scholar's study or a Leningrad architect's office. The result is a place with a distinctive character: muted, unhurried, with no attempt to impress from the doorway.

Our restaurant guide's team finds EM a rare case where the interior and the kitchen exist on the same wavelength.

Brand chef Olesya Drobot runs the kitchen. The menu here isn't a card of dishes to choose from but a seasonal set, changed completely once every three months. This format first appeared in Russia right here: EM is considered the first domestic restaurant to switch to a set menu as its only mode of service. The AGA stove, meanwhile, is no decoration — it's used directly in the cooking, and EM belongs to a small circle of restaurants worldwide where this appliance is put to professional use.

The address on the Moika River embankment adds context: an apartment in a historic building, no signage in the usual sense, an intimate format for a small number of guests. That's exactly how it all began — the place arose as a space for friends, and that scale is deliberately preserved to this day. Our secret guests gave the dinner 9 out of 10 — for the precision of the seasonal set and an atmosphere hard to reproduce at a larger scale.

The original-cuisine restaurant on the Moika is interesting precisely for this combination: historic context, hands-on work over live fire, and a menu that turns into something else every three months. For anyone looking for original cuisine in St. Petersburg without the tourist noise, this is one of the city's few genuinely consistent addresses.