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#17 | September 11 - 24, 1997  smlogo.gif

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Feature Story
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the eXile's Best and Worst of Moscow List

It's now REALLY September. The 850th party is over, which means that Muscovites who were terrified of getting hassled by the militsia have returned home, while all the provincials who came into town smashing bottles and vomiting and pissing in your podyezd will hop back on the elektrichka to go back to their miserable Zyuganovite-breeding high-rises on the outskirts. It means that summer vacation is officially history. School has begun again. And for most readers, it means work-related stress straight until Christmas, when the eXile will issue another shameless "special issue" intended to cash in on the whole holiday thing. That's a long way off. In the meantime, we've got to find a way to survive. It won't be easy. The weather gets colder and darker. The work piles up. Relationships fall apart. All that's left are three long months, in which your free time could be in danger of becoming a rudderless existence, navigating the stormy seas between one lousy eXpat party, Bells and back to another lame eXpat party. It's that scary.

Last issue, the eXile provided you with an abridged account of the oligarchical war brewing in Russia's upper echelons. You may feel a bit wiser, but really, you, the self-centered eXhole, might ask yourself, "How does that help ME?"

Well, the eXile is all about looking out for number one, so we understand your concerns. We know that you don't have the government connections to "young reformers"-or 70 million bucks-to pocket a multi-billion dollar nickel-mining company. So you've got to scale things down to your size: like how to blow your per diem, where to get a good burger, score an easy lay-or an expensive lay-and basically, who to hate.

So prepare yourself for the eXile Back 2 Work lists of the best and worst of things-Moscow. Our technicians slipped into their white smocks, slipped on horn-rimmed glasses, popped a Clorets breath mint in their mouths, and worked all night pushing funny little buttons and watching reel-to-reel tapes spin out of control in order to compile this list. Be careful with this information. If used as directed, it could save your life.


FOOD

Best Cheap-O Eatz (5 dollar maximum)

Russkoye Bistro

Ubiquitous, relatively low-fat, and still very cheap, Russkoye Bistro is still one of the great fast-food options around. They opened their first foreign franchise this year, in Boston, imbuing the entire operation with a Luzhkovian imperialist flair. Better than McDonald's for two big reasons: you don't feel sick after you leave, and the beverage menu is padded with alcohol instead of shakes.

HONORABLE MENTION: Johnny Fat Boy.

Worst Cheap-O Eatz

Burger Kveen

This place should be made into a museum, or transplanted intact to the Madame Tussaud Chamber of Horrors, or... or something: this place is, quite simply, possibly the worst restaurant in the entire world, and deserves to be given international recognition as such. Veggie Burgers melt like hot larvae into your hands: beef burgers feature maggoty texture and rock-hard buns. Surly personnel will likely ask you for a job. Tourists should check it out as a freak show or as a prophylactic against fast-food consumption, like the lungs of emphysema victims that are displayed in museums to convince people to quit smoking.

HONORABLE MENTION: Nothing comes close.

Best New Restaurant

Kohinoor

We take Kohinoor no. 1 in the draft and give it a huge signing bonus: it is, as sportscasters say, the total package. Excellent spicy Indian food at low prices, clean, pleasant interior, cool bands with weird unidentifiable percussive instruments, attentive but low-key service: we couldn't ask for more. Kohinoor is proof that Moscow can be home to first-rate reasonably-priced restaurants. Location a slight problem, and there are nights when the band plays ear-splitting, gut-grating loud music, but the positives far outweigh the negatives.

HONORABLE MENTION: Hola Mexico, Cafe Phoenix.

Worst New Restaurant

The Zoo

Yeah, we know, we blew them in our initial review. And, yes, they used to advertise with us, and they don't anymore. Even so, we put our credibility on the line to say here that the Zoo is this year's biggest disappointment. The fear begins when you're greeted at the door by what look like former vertukhai prison guards quickly fitted into cheap Polish suits. Wait staff is consistently slow and, when challenged, contentiousŃtell them you ordered a Coke ten minutes ago, and you're likely to hear that you didn't order a Coke, and anyway it was only five minutes ago. Food comes in small portions, is overpriced and greasy, and while not overly expensive, you somehow feel royally ripped off. Overall, a case of bad management ruining a great concept and location.

Best Burger

Le Gastronom

Another of the few remaining businesses with an eXile-hostile management; we'd like to blast Le Gas, but the fact remains that it still makes fantastic food. If you've got the funds and you're jonesing for a burger, this is the placeŃyou'll get a huge, well-cooked specimen here. Four-star interior totally burger inappropriate, of course, but this is Moscow and they're still working these things out. And oh yeah, that burger'll run you 17 bucks.

HONORABLE MENTION: Scandinavia, Chesterfield's Cafe, TGI Fridays.

Best Volume Deal

Uncle Guilly's Chicken Sandwich

Ten Bucks for a delicious chicken sandwich the size of a rugby ball, resting on an obscene bed of fries. Figuring in the date/business-meeting-appropriate décor, this is definitely the best quality/ quantity deal around.

HONORABLE MENTION: Pork Enchiladas, Hola Mexico.

Worst Value

Lily Wong's

Earned the nickname "Really Wrong's" after being ripped off one too many times. One time they even charged our general counsel 21 dollars for a bottled water. Small portions, laughable prices and merely-decent Chinese food that would have a tough time staying open in any corner mall at a tenth of the price make Really Wrong's a crime even by local standards.

HONORABLE MENTION: Maxim's, Planet Hollywood (unless you're on a date with a provincial Russian-then that $15 burger is worth it!)

Best Service

Starlite Diner

These poor people have been combating capricious eXpat customers round the clock for a while now, giving them the most experience in refilling coffee, coughing up the check, etc. eXholes should tip accordingly; even tight-fisted editor Mark Ames gives 15% once in a while.

HONORABLE MENTION: Kohinoor, Darbar.

Worst Toilets

Darbar/Kohinoor

We don't know why these choice Indian restaurants, offering the best service and excellent value, provide you with toilets that would make a Turkish prison warden proud. Warning: if you know in advance that you will have to use the bathroom, do NOT order the dal: the association will be just too much to bear.

HONORABLE MENTION: The Hungry Duck, Krisis Zhanra


CLUBS/CASINOS

Best Place to Score

Night Flight

Have money, will travel. Still the decadence standard for businessmen in a hurry. Men with pacemakers should stay away from this place, unless they want to pay for an eXile staffer to accompany them. Excellent window shopping at prices half that of Metelitsa.

Best Place to Score for Free

The Hungry Duck

Possibly the most notorious bar in Europe, the Duck is already a Moscow cultural cliche, but it earned its reputation. You come here, you get drunk, you leave with someone-it's that simple. Just don't complain about whom you end up with. Fights, stench, vomit, and deafening noise are the non-monetary costs the Duck extracts for its services-but if you want it badly enough, you're more than willing to put up with it.

Best Place to Score for Free That Isn't

Bell's

Johnny Chen scored here more than once, which is good enough for us. Horny, juiced-up Russian girls mixed in with nerdy middle-aged guys makes for excellent odds, even for dorky science geeks like our own Chen. But as the Chenster warns, "Wear heavy vodka goggles here. It can be depressing if you're sober."

Best Social Pariah

Vijay Maheshewari

The word "Vijay" passes our monster spell-checker, which is about as far as this guy has gotten this year. The sometimes-Moscow-Times contributor-cum-free-lancer/scam artist is a true social pariah, reviled by virtually everyone in the Moscow expatriate scene; his existence is proof that we finally have a unified, tightly-knit community that can agree on something. A frenzied paranoiac who will undergo Herculean efforts to weasel the phone number out of any woman within 100 meters of him, he is a person whose very presence bar managers say takes about 8% off the gross for an entire evening. Michael Bass would win this award, except that we're starting to kind of warm up to the ZiL-totin Scarhead, the way you start to get attached to a stain on your underwear.

HONORABLE MENTION: Jonathan Hay, for causing more damage to US-Russian relations, and US-Harvard relations, than any paranoid communist could possibly hope for.

Best Blackjack Rules

Marilyn

The most player-friendly blackjack table in town. Offers surrender, doubling, insurance, the whole works. Only beaten out in one respect: Oasis offers a lower minimum bet.

Best Non-gaming Casino Services

Metelitsa

They have whores in here who would make an Arab pimp blush. Moscow has many casinos, but very few truly swanky casino scenes: Metelitsa is the best in this respect.

HONORABLE MENTION: Golden Palace

Best In-House Music

Tie: Cabana, Chance, Propaganda

What these three totally different clubs share is that they haven't succumbed to techno on the one hand, but they didn't fall for the mixture of cheesy pop/frat boy rotation of the old 011. Cabana is more on the pop end, but in a way that isn't obnoxious; Propaganda is the most Western-cool, emphasizing funk and hip-hop; and Chance is sort of Cabana on E.

Worst In-House Music

The list is so long that it's best just to assume you will suffer severe techno-itis almost anywhere you. The same hardcore shit over and over in the "cool" clubs. "House" techno in the Bulgakovs and Utopiyas. And if you're real lucky, "Lady In Red" just to get the mood going.

HONORABLE MENTION: Luch's Saturday night 70s disco. Sort of like reliving a bad childhood. Come on, guys, you have some of the best DJs in Moscow!

Best Live Band

Detsky Panadoll

In a town where you're more likely to hear someone fart the Marseilles than a good live band, this hip-hop/funk/misc. act is rockin', danceable, and fun-a rare combo. The smoking rhythm section and the Russian and American vocalists' novel decision to sing in their native languages make the horde of English-singing bands who claim that you can't rock in Russian seem just plain silly. MT Out equated these guys with the birth of a new "scene," but for now they appear to be one of a kind. Just hope some undue interest from a certain multinational pharmaceutical concern doesn't shut the boys down. Either that, or the old rock 'n roll attitude. "But these sanwiches don't fold..." Careful, guys.

HONORABLE MENTION: Alexei Paperny, Blast

Best 20-Something Club

Propaganda

One of the only places you can go to escape the percieved horrors of things-Russian without a guilty "I'm culturally insensitive" conscience. High flannel shirt factor, pointy beards o'plenty, good DJs who eschew techno, and plenty of wood to give it that green, back-to-nature feel you've been missing after all the white-tiled New Russian joints.

HONORABLE MENTION: Krisis Zhanra

Most Painful Venue

Old Square

You're a member of some secret flaggelist sect, but whipping your back to bloody shreds with strips of barbed wire just doesn't give you the same satisfaction it used to. Well, don't worry, we've got something worse. It's called a shitty club with shitty people. There are numerous choices around town to give you that "I should have left way long ago" feeling, but the crowned queen of crap has to be Staraya Ploschad. The people are geeks, sober, and lovers of schloky Europop trash. You think, just as you walk down the brick-lined stairwell, that there might be something. After all, the atmosphere appears potentially decent... then you stay, and stay, and then debate about where to go, then argue, then finally leave in a huff, only to return two months later, because in Moscow it's easy to forget a bad time.

HONORABLE MENTION: Marika. So you stand there looking like an idiot, then you leave feeling like an idiot. Don't bother, unless you're packin an 8-ball.


HACKS

Best Foreign Correspondent

Thomas De Waal, The Times of London

De Waal left Russia earlier this year and this month will be publishing a book on Chechnya which he co-authored along with Carlotta Gall of the Moscow Times, which we won't hold against him. Calm, collected, and competent, De Waal never jumped on the "reform" bandwagon and set a standard which other bureaus unfortunately did not often uphold. One of just a handful of reporters to whom our Abram Kalashnikov gives "two Styrofoam coffee cups way up!"

HONORABLE MENTION: David Filipov, Boston Globe.

Worst Foreign Correspondent

Carol J. Williams, The Los Angeles Times

She looked down the streets of much-improved Moscow and saw car bombings and man-eating potholes: she gazed at writhing scandal-plagued bribe-fattened Vice-Premier Boris Nemtsov and saw a squeaky clean hunk in a Zhiguli. Williams is the ultimate press villain; a person who thinks first about how an article should sound, then goes out and finds the story to fit the format, rather than vice versa.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: Michael Specter, New York Times.

Best Preposterous Sentence Written By A Foreign Correspondent

"The increase in [Russia's] births began immediately after the presidential elections last year, when President Boris Yeltsin defeated his communist challenger."
Michael Specter, New York Times.

Best Moscow Times Headline

Antibiotics Fail to Kill Virus

Best Untold Moscow Times Story

What was said to whom in the Moscow Times newsroom before interim editor Geoff Winestock issued his correction after the Times published an eXile April Fool hoax. The eXile had fooled the Moscow daily Sport Express into believing that Wilt Chamberlain was converting to Christianity and attempting a comeback in Russia: the Moscow Times printed it verbatim, credited the story to (MT), then issued a somber correction the next day.

HONORABLE MENTION: Female staffers' bathroom gossip about their experiences with ex-Batwing Soup columnist Owen Matthews.

Best Newspaper

Novaya Gazeta
Obnoxious supersleuth Alexander Minkin, who has the ego of Limonov, the balls of Chuck Yeager, and the acid pen of a Mark E. Smith. Minkin leads a pack of aggressive young reporters who try every week to do something to get themselves whacked. Novaya Gazeta is the best way in town to keep abreast of what's really going on.

HONORABLE MENTION: Sovershenno Sekretno, Profil, Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Worst Newspaper

The Moscow Tribune

Someone should tell publisher Anthony Louis' mother, who is funding him, that his newspaper still sucks and is still losing money after all these years. Louis could have done something interesting with this paper, but instead he turned it into a pale, error-filled copy of the more (and we hate to admit this) competent and professional Moscow Times. The only mitigating factor is that its continued existence ensures that the Times can't go paid-only, as they intended to do this year.

HONORABLE MENTION: Izvestiya. Was once the most respected newspaper, now a terrifying example of oligarchical press control.


MISCELLANY

Best Place To Take Death Porn Photos

Behind a Dorozhny Patrol Truck

Follow these guys around for a day, and you'll never want to look at a dead body again.

HONORABLE MENTION: The MKAD, behind a car driven by a US Embassy Employee.

Best Act of Naked Hypocrisy

George Soros's $980 million investment in the Svyazinvest bid. Soros just a year before had written an article for Atlantic monthly in which he said that capitalism, not communism, was now the biggest threat to world security, and that Russia's "robber baron" capitalists were now our biggest villains. Yeah, right. If co-bidder Oneximbank isn't a robber baron, we'd hate to see who is.

HONORABLE MENTION: Jonathan Hay nearly tied for this one; he came to Russia to teach ethical American-style capitalism, and wound up getting involved in the middle of one of the biggest insider scams of the year. Your country thanks you!

Best Quote

St. Petersburg Press spokesmen following the assassination of St. Pete Privatization Chief Mikhail Manevich, who was shot in broad daylight in central Petersburg. "They were sending someone a message. If they'd wanted to just kill him, they would have shot him in his podyezd."

HONORABLE MENTION: Boris Berezovsky's assessment of rival Boris Nemtsov: "Sometimes you are Boris Yefimovich, sometimes you are Boris Abramovich, and sometimes you try to be Boris Nikolayevich."

Best Marketing Technique

Golden Ring Supermarket

In a move guaranteed to bring 'em in in droves, this supermarket in the Dom Na Naberzhniye, under new management, instituted a policy of 20% markups during night hours, which they proudly advertise on their front door. Maybe it would sound better if they made it 20% discounts during daylight. No, that would make too much sense.

Best New Movie on Video

Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Driving Your Juice in the Hood

This spoof of gangsta 'hood movies is the most oft-rented film in eXile history. A classic in the "Im Gonna Git You Sucka" genre. Check it out at Bobby Brown's.

HONORABLE MENTION: "Heat," for its sheer abundance of bad B-movie lines, such as, "I may be stoned on grass and Prozac, but at least I care about our relationship."

Best Security Staff

The Beverly Hills Club

These guys are going to make a Death Porn photo out of Michael Bass yet. Some security guards spend their lives trying to avoid tense situations. These guys look forward to them, but also have a way of making you, the common eXhole, feel comfortable. Getting the bad guys with no civilian casualites: Now that's what we call service!


So, there you have it. Save this list. Or send us a copy of your own. Compare tastes-you may find that we're all on the same page here... or, that we have nothing in common, that you actually dig hanging out at Staraya Ploschad after a pleasant meal at Burger Kveen. You may, in fact, never trust us again. But we figure that's a good start. We don't want you to trust us. That's what makes us different from the competition, and, paradoxically, it's why you trust us even more.

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