Features

Surviving the world’s most expensive cities: Moscow

25 Sep 2008 by Sara Turner

It has more billionaires than any other city, but doing business in the Russian capital needn’t break the bank, says Philip Parker

Hotels

Milan Hotel

Finding reasonably priced accommodation in central Moscow is nigh on impossible, and some of the best new hotels in the city are looking to attract guests with convenient public transport links rather than downtown locations. The four-star Milan is a good example, located in a drab dormitory region in the south-east of the city, but offering fast access both to the city centre (30 minutes’ metro ride to Red Square) and Domodedovo airport (20 minutes by bus or taxi). Opened in 2007, the Milan has 300 compact but comfortable rooms decorated in shades of beige, gold and white, and a full range of business services including stylish meeting space and wifi access throughout. Shipilovskaya Ulitsa 28A, Domodedovskaya metro station, milan-welhotels.ru Rooms from 7,700RUR (£173)

Sretenskaya Hotel

Inside the Garden Ring and only 20 minutes’ walk from the Kremlin, the tiny Sretenskaya Hotel offers some of the most charming accommodation and friendliest service in the centre of Moscow. As well as 38 cosy rooms, the Sretenskaya’s pretty early 19th-century building manages to house a full range of superior amenities, including mini-gym, business centre, meeting room, and underground parking. The hotel’s fairy-tale theme and luxuriant Winter Garden café keep the right side of kitsch, and the restaurant is surprisingly good for simple, reasonably priced Russian cuisine. The Sretenskaya’s solid reputation can make availability a problem, so book as early as you can. Ulitsa Sretenka 15, Sukharevskaya metro station, hotel-sretenskaya.ru Rooms from 9,500RUR (£214)

Holiday Inn Lesnaya

The exorbitant rates and chronic shortage of availability at Moscow’s top hotels make Holiday Inn’s reliable combination of well-equipped rooms and standard business and leisure services attractive even to those who would normally give the chain a wide berth, although rates may still seem shockingly high. The Lesnaya is the most centrally located of the four Moscow Holiday Inns, five minutes’ walk from Belarus station and the metro, and also has surprisingly stylish interiors with sleek, minimalist décor in shades of red and white. Also worth a look are the Holiday Inn Sokolniki, which has good public transport links and is right next to the Sokolniki Exhibition Centre, and the suburban Holiday Inn Vinogradovo, which has the most extensive meeting and conference facilities in Moscow. Lesnaya Ulitsa 15, Belorusskaya metro station, holidayinn.com Rooms from 10,800RUR (£243)

Medea Hotel

Another small hotel with a good central location, the Medea is situated in Zamoskvorechye, the 19th-century merchant’s quarter south of the Moskva river and only five minutes’ walk from the superb State Tretyakov Gallery of Russian Art. The hotel honours this heritage with plain but pretty art nouveau interiors and an air of refined gentility which makes a refreshing change from the glitz and frenetic pace of Moscow. Most of the 21 guest rooms are spacious apartments with basic self-catering facilities, which also helps to keep costs down. Amenities include a health club with sauna and small gym, and an elegant restaurant and lobby bar. Pyatnitsky Pereulok 4, Novokuznetskaya Metro Station, medea-hotel.ru Rooms from 7,350RUR (£165)

Maxima Zarya Hotel

If you want to stay in Moscow for less than £100 per night, you normally have to put up with surly or nonexistent service, shabby, ageing interiors and a total lack of amenities. The Maxima Zarya and its sister the Maxima Irbis Hotel are among the few exceptions. Located in a leafy residential area in the north-west of Moscow, these neighbouring three-star properties offer bright and modern guest rooms with good technical facilities, including wifi, plus a very fair range of meeting venues and restaurants. Red Square is easily accessed by metro, with a journey time of under 30 minutes. The English-speaking staff are helpful, if not exactly friendly. There’s little to choose between the two properties, but the Zarya is very slightly cheaper. Gostinichnaya Ulitsa 4/9, Vladykino metro station, maximahotel.com Rooms from 3,600RUR (£81)

Restaurants

Suliko Na Patriarshakh

The recent war has done nothing to dampen Muscovites’ ardour for Georgian cuisine, which has always been flavoursome, healthy and surprisingly cheap. This new branch of the popular Suliko restaurant in one of Moscow’s prettiest central neighbourhoods has a summer terrace overlooking the Patriarch’s Ponds and a menu which, while limited, offers very reasonably priced examples of old favourites like kharcho mutton broth, aubergine rolls stuffed with walnut puree, spicy vegetable stew adzhapsandal, and fresh-baked khachapuri – delicious and filling cheese-bread to be accompanied with sour-plum and hot tomato sauce. For a fuller and pricier experience, try the original Suliko south of the river. Starters 250RUR Mains 350RUR Yermolaevskiy Pereulok 7, Mayakovskaya metro station, suliko.ru, open daily from 9am to 10.30pm

Dacha Na Pokrovke

For reasons unfathomable to man, finding well-cooked and reasonably priced traditional Russian food is one of Moscow’s greatest challenges. If you’re determined to sample the local cuisine, then Dacha Na Pokrovke at least has the advantage of genuinely charming surroundings. A real dacha in the very centre of the city, the place is best visited in summer, when there’s a terrace with barbecue and open-air dancing. Meat cutlets, salted fish, dumplings, potatoes with mushrooms, and other things that go well with vodka are all carefully prepared using fresh ingredients, and the interiors, which are full of Soviet memorabilia, old photos, and antiques, are quirky and fun rather than oppressive. Starters 350RUR Mains 600RUR Pokrovskiy Bulvar 16-18/4-4A, Kitai-Gorod metro station, dacha-napakrovke.ru, open daily from 12pm to around 5am

Correa’s

Founded by Isaac Correa, a New Yorker who has pioneered fusion cuisine in Moscow for over a decade, this chain of bright, modern cafés is enormously popular, although its range of fresh and inventive pizzas, sandwiches and salads may not be fully appreciated until you’ve been in Moscow for a couple of weeks and discovered just how hard it is to find similar good-quality fare at low prices. The menu is updated weekly, but perennially popular dishes include pizza with smoked salmon, sour cream and red caviar; French beans with sugar-snap peas in nut-oil and orange dressing; Philadelphia steak sandwiches; and portabella mushrooms and leeks in a herb crust. Salads 300RUR Sandwiches 250RUR Pizzas 350RUR Mains 650RUR Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Ulitsa 32, Belorusskaya metro station, correas.ru, open daily from 8am to 11pm (from 9am Saturday and Sunday)

Golden Apple Restaurant

Even if you cannot justify the astronomical room rates at Moscow’s most stylish small hotel, it’s well worth checking out the Golden Apple’s adjoining restaurant and bar, both for the funky, cheerful interiors and the excellent fusion menu. A carefully selected range of sushi, tapas and Russian zakuski are the ideal accompaniment to the bar’s kicking cocktails, while the restaurant offers excellent seafood salads and an imaginative selection of entrées including regularly updated seasonal specials. The wine list is pricey but very good, the service is excellent and the atmosphere manages to be both ever-so-trendy and very cozy. Starters 500RUR Mains 800RUR Malaya Dmitrovka Ulitsa 11, Pushkinskaya metro station, goldenapple.ru, open daily from 7am to 11pm (bar open 24-hours)

Darbar

Located on the top floor of the bland Sputnik Hotel on Leninsky Prospekt, Darbar is a little way out of the city centre, but well worth the trek for authentic Indian food which is excellent by any standards and, for Moscow, simply unbelievable. The extensive menu has delicacies from every region of India – Goan king-prawns in coconut and poppy-seed sauce, Malabar fish curry, Kerala fried chicken, Kashmiri rogan josh – and all of them are superbly cooked. Vegetarians will find probably the best choice in Moscow. The restaurant has elegant interiors and spectacular views of Moscow State University, the finest of the city’s seven Stalinist skyscrapers. Starters 300RUR Mains 600RUR Leninsky Prospekt 38, Leninsky Prospekt metro station, darbar.ru, open daily from 12pm to 12am

Making the most of your roubles

1 Take the metro

With Moscow traffic approaching gridlock on a daily basis and official taxis in short supply, using public transport makes sense practically as well as economically. The size of the stations and the number of passengers may take a little getting used to, but Moscow’s metro is safe, cheap, efficient and stunningly beautiful, and covers all but the furthest corners of the 400-square-mile city. Learning the Cyrillic alphabet will save you from having to count stops and fret at interchanges. Tickets for a single journey cost a flat rate of 19RUR – around 40p – with discounts when you buy five or more. Stations are open from 5.30am to 1am.

2 Fly around

Russian train prices are shooting up at the same time as internal budget air carriers are appearing on the scene, so it now makes sense to fly even on the comparatively short route between Moscow and St Petersburg. Sky Express (skyexpress.ru) is currently offering 999RUR flights from Vnukovo airport to all its destinations, including St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Kaliningrad and Sochi.

3 Flag a car

Not for the faint-hearted but often the only way to get a ride home, the tradition of sticking out your hand and haggling with any driver who will stop is probably not recommended for women on their own. If you’re willing to risk it, the system can be mastered quickly with a minimal command of Russian – often that is all the drivers have. Never get in a car with more than one person, and wave on anyone who looks more than usually unprepossessing. If you can’t make yourself understood, just show your destination on a piece of paper and the money you’re willing to pay to get there. Journeys across the centre should cost no more than 200RUR, and 400RUR should get you anywhere in the city.

4 Avoid the Bolshoi

This goes without saying at the moment, as the main Bolshoi Theatre is still closed for reconstruction and the company is only performing on the new Small Stage and occasionally at venues like the State Kremlin Palace. The main stage is due to reopen in November 2009, but ticket prices are already creeping up, and the best performances, especially for the ballet, are often sold out months in advance. Moscow’s second musical theatre, the awkwardly named Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, completed its reconstruction in 2006 and has some excellent productions in its repertoire, often at half the price of the Bolshoi. Check The Moscow Times listings (moscowtimes.ru) for details.

5 Drink local

Unless you have to entertain clients, you can massively decrease your expenses on an evening out by only drinking locally produced alcohol. Russian beers are generally half the price of imports, and Baltika, Sibirskaya Korona, and Stary Melnik are all perfectly reasonable lagers. You may be wary of Soviet champagne – shampanskoe – but the dries and bruts are often a lot better than their £3 price tags would suggest. If you are a spirits drinker, vodka is normally your only option – a menu with only imported vodkas is a good sign that you’re in a joyless and venal establishment – but it’s well worth trying Armenian and even some Moldovan cognacs.

6 Book locally

The best way to save money on hotel bookings is to go through a local agent. Not only will they offer discounts on rack rates, but with availability being the problem it is in Moscow at the moment – estimates suggest that up to 70 per cent of travellers are being turned away from their first choice of hotel due to lack of space – competent local agents are best placed to advise you on where to get the best value for your dates of travel. Moscow Hotels (moscow-hotels.net) and Reisebuero-Welt (reisebuero-welt.com) are both reliable options.

7 Forget transfers

Due to the extortionate practices of so-called “taxi mafias”, booking a transfer in advance was once the only way to ensure a reasonably priced and relatively comfortable transfer from Moscow airports to the city centre. However, since the Sheremetyevo-Savelovskiy rail link finally opened in June, all three of Moscow’s major airports – Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo – now have high-speed rail links to the city centre. A first class ticket on the new service costs only 350RUR, and none of the trains take more than 40 minutes to get into town. Visit sheremetyevo-airport.ru, domodedovo.ru and vnukovo.ru.
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