the eXile - bar-dak - Lionel Tannenbaum

Issue #11/92, June 8 - 22, 2000

SPORTING A WOODROW

By Lionel Tannenbaum

Let's not beat around the bush here. I went to SPARTAK, or Spartacus, expecting a subliminally gay-themed homage to Kirk Douglas and the late Stanley Kubrick. I was even wearing my leather trousers. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered this eatery to be a haven for those ill-mannered, red-scarved sports fans who are always terrorizing good folk like you and me in metro stations after rowdy soccer matches. Nevertheless, Spartak is - as the sign out front says - not a sports bar but rather a "Sports Restaurant." And this being Moscow, the sports hooligans didn't even seem to mind my leather pants all that much.

Of course, food is probably not the first thing on your mind when heading to a sporting establishment, so we'd better get a few drinks in us first before attempting to eat anything. Pay more for the middling imported beers (Heineken, Murphy's) if you must, but true Spartak will insist on Baltika, reasonably priced at around $2 per half liter. As you enjoy your beer, take a few moments to note the layout. No-nonsense betting room laden with TV monitors near the front entrance. Amusingly formal dining room and the Viking-worthy VIP room in the back. All centered around the spacious main bar area, with its sturdy large wooden tables and still more TV monitors. There's also a not-too-large stage, home to a lively strip show weekend evenings.

OK, that's probably enough walking around - let's get something to eat. As bar starters go, the wings were surprisingly good. True, the "hot Louisiana sauce" was decidedly ketchup-like, but the chicken was crispy enough I might even be willing to accept that the wings weren't frozen. The calamari rings, meanwhile, were much liked by my cohorts (I don't generally care much for such things myself). While they were enjoying those, I got to know a decent, if unstellar Greek salad. Even if you have complaints about the perhaps overly greasy dressing, you're bound to appreciate the unusually high proportion of genuine (i.e., not Chinese cabbage) lettuce leaves.

But perhaps you're the kind of sports fan who prefers a little soup with his athletic spectacle. In this case, you have half a dozen or so to choose from for around $2-3 each. We sampled the borshch and kharcho, both of which were basically solid on the whole, even if somewhat weak in spots. The kharcho, for example, was flavorful but contained too much meat and not enough rice. Then again if it's solid kharcho you're after, you should be visiting one of the city's fine Georgian places and not some sporting establishment. Yes, I think we can all agree on that count.

You can imagine what came next. That's right... entrees! Ames was all over the pork piccata, which he consumed with marked gusto. As for me, I had a serviceable salmon steak (that's syomga, not losos', for those who keep track of such things) with rice. I advise many of you to do the same, if only for the fish's high content of those healthful fatty oils that tend to be so deficient in our modern diet.

As we watched an aging Michael Chang take a thrilling tiebreak set off of Brazilian Nazi Gustavo Kuerten, none of us had any real interest in pursuing a dessert. Nevertheless, based on some vague sense of professional duty, I decided to give the "soft" cheesecake a try. The accompanying strawberry sauce (from a can, apparently) was rather alarming in its tang. You probably wouldn't like it. Better just to double up on an after-dinner drink - Irish coffee, perhaps, which I found to be not-at-all too sweet and packed a sufficiently boozy punch to get me through most of the rest of the evening without mishap.

And for those who are disgusted by the idea of televised (or any other sort of) soccer, Spartak's management has indicated its serious intention to organize the relevant live satellite TV linkup in time for the real football (i.e., NFL) season this autumn. Life indeed is a box of chocolates, as the fellow says.

Links