An old hand in this industry gave me a piece of advice. If you go to a restaurant and either you or your guests get unconscionably drunk, you’d better give that restaurant a good review, otherwise they might dob you in.
So I’ll start by telling you that Borscht N Tears is an absolute joy of a restaurant. A joy that has a remarkable range of vodkas, including a horseradish-infused one you can taste behind your eyes that I spent an hour sipping happily. That probably wasn’t in the spirit of things, but it felt important to be able to remember the starters at least.
We are here — near Knightsbridge Tube station and Harrods, a part of London where nobody who does anything so uncouth as working for a living sets foot — at the suggestion of friends. They had stumbled in accidentally one night and found the atmosphere uproariously fun, the staff amusingly blunt, the whole place fascinating. It’s a family-run joint, the oldest Russian restaurant in the UK, and has that pervading sense of weary comic irony you only get from a country with a lot of barren tundra to its name, and which has spent much of its history being taken over by madmen.
What’s it like to run a Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge? Quiet. We’re the only customers for much of the time, apart from a glamorous pair of older women with suspiciously frozen faces and a businessman muttering furtively into his phone.
The restaurant itself is dark. There is a slight sense of sitting in a luxurious basement. It’s almost like a child’s drawing of where you’d meet a spy. Black and burgundy walls. Mahogany tables. Red velvet chairs. An air of faded grandeur. Most of the customers are Russian or from former Soviet states, says our waiter, Bogdan. “We let you in because it was quiet.”
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“English people think Russian food is rubbish,” he explains. “They think it’s just vodka and potatoes — but that’s Irish food.” There is a pause while everyone looks at the Irish friend we’ve brought along. “To be fair,” Bogdan continues, “we do have a lot of potatoes.”
Correct — and a lot of vodka. A dizzying array thereof. But also much more. Russia, lest we forget, is a huge country with a correspondingly huge array of food, and influences from eastern Europe to the Stans to India. But let’s round off the potatoes first. Potato vareniki — dumplings topped with fried onions and dill (warning: you’ll be in trouble if you don’t like dill), with a satisfyingly thick sour cream for dipping. Boiled potatoes with smart slices of pickled herring and pickled onion. Another warning: you’ll be in real trouble if you don’t like pickles.
If you do, welcome to the promised land: a preponderance of pickles, forming the natural endpoint of any country where some parts barely see summer. The pickled vegetable platter is a vinegar work of art — everything from aubergines to tomatoes has undergone Russia’s favourite pastime.
Pair them with rye bread and the most unappealing-sounding item on the menu: the salted unrendered pork fat. Delicate furls of lardo with a lumpy horseradish dip to cut through the fat. Add aubergine “caviar”, which turns out to be glorious amounts of garlic, mashed with aubergine and red pepper and presented in the aubergine skins.
When attempting to establish how many mains to order, one of us asks about portion sizes. With pleasing Slavic literalism, Bogdan explains that the mains are about 220 grams, smaller dishes 160 grams — an approach I don’t think I’ve encountered outside the world of steak.
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We acquire 220 grams of Middle Asian lamb plov — seared lamb slow-cooked in rice with white and yellow carrots, chickpeas and whole baby garlic heads. It’s an Uzbek dish, like a softly cuminy biryani.
One revelation is the lagman: doughy stretched wheat noodles wok-fried with beef, pepper, yardlong bean (actually more like 30cm) and celery, finished with soy sauce and chives. Sichuan pepper gives it a kick. We’ve ordered it to share but I end up commandeering the plate.
Then dessert (a Napoleon — a sort of honey millefeuille) and vodka (lots — up to the point where the restaurant ran out of shot glasses). My friends cycle through honey, raspberry, beluga and Lord knows what else. I receive a text from one the next morning saying he has woken up fully clothed on his sofa, headphones still in his ears and rain pouring through his open balcony door. Another hasn’t gone home at all. As I said, Borscht N Tears is a truly excellent restaurant.
★★★★☆
borshtchntears.com
