CULTURE

smooth but not so sophisticated

Special to The St. Petersburg Times

Cafe/Club Velvet on the corner of Professor Popov and Aptekarsky streets lies just north of the Botanical Garden on the Petrograd side. Originally established by Peter the Great in 1714 as a "pharmaceutical garden" for growing medicinal herbs and rare plants, the garden is both an ordered landscape of walkways lined with exotic plants and flowers and a dense forest with bogs, crumbling bridges, and a massive greenhouse.

If you exit the garden and turn left a large V in red paint is visible just beyond the intersection. What could it possibly mean? It means "Velvet" and as far as I know is not a veiled reference to Thomas Pynchon's debut novel. It means luxury and decadence, a refashioning of the color red which has long been associated not with velvet but with revolution. Either way it's enough to draw you in.

The menu at Cafe Velvet is modest (aside from the large selection of alcohol and tea) with a small selection of sushi and what is loosely referred to as "European" cuisine. When I went the sushi chef was ill, perhaps a bad omen meaning that that part of the menu was not available.

But there are plenty of other fish and seafood options. The mussels are baked either in a piquant sauce with red wine or in garlic herb butter and come in dozen or half dozen portions. The mussels in garlic butter (half a dozen for 180 rubles, $6.20, or a dozen for 340 rubles, $11.70) were fresh, plump, and well seasoned - some even too salty. You'll have to order bread to get the remaining butter out of each shell, as it does not come compliments of the house. One order, two rustic multi-grain rolls - something unusual in this city - is 30 rubles ($1.03).

The tuna salad (125 rubles, $4.31) was less successful. A combination of red and white tuna, salmon, lettuce, peas, and potatoes, everything was diced so small it was hard to tell what was what. The idea of keeping things whole so you can really taste and see what you're eating hasn't made its way to Russia yet.

I think the tuna salad would be significantly better if the lettuce was in whole leaves, the tomatoes simply halved or quartered, the potatoes grilled, and the fish seared and served rare atop the lettuce. In the case of Velvet it seems the task was to achieve sameness in size and shape rather than bring out the flavor of the food.

The Hungarian salad (105 rubles, $3.62) with Chinese cabbage, sausage, peppers, mustard, and oil was similar in form to the tuna salad but fared better because of the ingredients. The mustard vinaigrette was light and I must say I was pleased to be eating a salad without mayonnaise, not having asked for it to be withheld. There's also a Greek salad (100 rubles, $3.44) with feta, tomatoes, and salad greens and salad cypriano (85 rubles, $2.89) with cucumbers, gouda, ham, Bulgarian pepper, and mayonnaise.

There are a number of soups including a cream soup with spinach (75 rubles, $2.58) that looked like a large bowl of pistachio pudding. I think perhaps that instead of the spinach serving as the thickener with a bit of flour too much cream was used or it was over worked. Cream soup can be rich and almost a meal by itself but it should still be soup, with the cream ideally being added at the end and the vegetables serving as the base. There's also a cheese soup (80 rubles, $2,75), fish solyanka (hearty soup for 135 rubles, $4.65), and meat solyanka (105 rubles, $3.62).

The salmon shashlyk (grilled pieces of salmon for 200 rubles, $6.89) served with a remoulade (a mustard dressing) was cooked perfectly - not at all dried out. The fish was delicate it broke apart just removing it from the skewer and seasoned simply with dill and lemon. There's also a steak with demi-glaze (wine stock) for 200 rubles ($6.89) and the standard Beef Stroganoff for 190 rubles ($6.55). And, though I didn't have a chance to try them, the pork or lamb ribs with "velvet" sauce are for the more daring. The sauce is made with honey, prunes, apricot, and red wine.

The bar menu is extensive with everything from grappa, calvados, cognac, and whiskey to wine, champagne, and fresh squeezed juice. You can choose between a tall glass of freshly squeezed mandarin juice (100 rubles, $3.44) or a glass of the Chilean sunrise shiraz (180 rubles, $6.20). Bottles of wine range from 1,250 rubles ($43) to 900 rubles ($31).

And indeed Velvet appears to be more a place to sit and have a drink either outside under the red awning or inside where a large flat screen television playing pop music videos will keep you entertained if your company fails to. The TV is a symbol of empty space and I think in a sense that's what Cafe/Club Velvet is trying to create. The style is art deco but not very comfortable and a bit too clean. But it's new and it always takes a while for a place to feel like it's lived in, or in the case of a restaurant at least visited frequently.

Anyway, I recommend sitting outside. It's one of the more pleasant spots I've found in the city and a good place to have a drink after emerging from the garden.

Cafe/Club Velvet, 7 Ulitsa Professora Popova. Tel: 347 6593. Menu in Russian and English. Cash only. Open Monday-Thursday from 11 a.m. through 12 p.m., Friday-Saturday 12 p.m. through 2 a.m., Sunday 1 p.m. through 11 p.m. Dinner for two: 1,500 rubles ($51).

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