Volna - ”wave” - is a new restaurant by Andrei Dellos, the owner of Pushkin, the compulsory stop for well-off tourists, and the omnipresent Mu Mu fastfood chain. Volna replaced the Nordic cuisine restaurant Orange 3, which also belonged to Maison Dellos.
In the center of the hall you’ll find a copper stall where you can check out the shrimps, oysters and fish in ice baths. Behind the stall is an open kitchen. The wall in the back is covered with carved fish shapes and the lighting gives them the illusion of a 3-D projection.
Volna’s brand chef is Andrei Makhov, who’s been at the helm of Pushkin for many years. He works together with chef Denis Fil, known for his restaurant work in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.
Volna is about fish and seafood in all its varieties and it comes from all over the country—from Northern rivers (omul, whitefish, salmon), from the Baltic Sea (lamprey and smoked eel), from the Black Sea (mussels, mullet) and from the Far East (shrimps and crabs).
Volna capitalizes on the trend of going back to the roots of Russian cuisine. Thus, fish is not just cooked at a run of the mill grill, but by a technique called “na rashchepe,” literally, “splintered wood.” Volna also brings back some old Russian recipes, like “telnoye”—fish patty made of carp, served with stewed cabbage (590 rubles).
There’s a lot of raw fish—try suguday made of omul, a fish native to Lake Baikal, cut into extra thin slices and served with a bit of oil and salt (495 rubles). You also have your choice of stroganina, similar to suguday, but served frozen, made of red salmon or whitefish (from 790 rubles). If you are looking for something more familiar, order ceviche made of river trout from Karelia (650 rubles).
Seafood is rather pricey, 1 kilogram of shrimp will cost you 3,900 rubles, while crab fingers are 4,400 rubles. If you’re short on the green, you can also try “rybnik” (fish pie) with Northern fish — 1,100 rubles for four people. Wash your fish down with a glass of white or rosé from a carefully curated wine menu (from about 400 rubles).
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