It doesn't have a red Michelin star for the quality of the food, but a green one for sustainability - and above all a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere.

The “Björn” restaurant is located in a Moscow nightlife district, it specializes in Nordic cuisine and at “democratic prices”, as it is called in Russia.

You sit at rustic wooden tables under brick walls.

For "Björn" and his head chef Nikita Poderjagin, it would be unacceptable to work with disposable dishes to deliver food during the lockdown in the corona pandemic, as many other restaurants did.

They preferred to close, and 26-year-old Poderjagin worked on new ideas.

Friedrich Schmidt

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Constant renewal is a must at “Björn”.

The name - Björn means bear in Swedish - as well as products from the Moscow area and the neighboring areas create a connection with Russia.

Exceptions must be made for certain game that has to walk a lot before it is served.

We tried the smoked venison with beetroot on bread, the spruce lemonade and balls of braised wild boar in potato batter with fried chanterelles.

They were so convincing that afterwards an "ugly" chocolate cake according to the restaurant had to accompany the espresso.

Conclusion: highly recommended.

The Moscow "Sobyanization"

The culinary scene in Moscow has changed a lot. This is already clear in the markets. Until a few years ago, they were places where you didn't want to stay longer: pushy salespeople who set prices based on the customers' suspected financial strength; suspicious housewives who checked every apple; hunched over old people who stuffed bargains into pull carts in the evenings. If you visit the Danilovsky Market in the south of the center of the Russian capital or the Ussachyovsky Market in the Khamovniki district in a loop of the Moskva River, you will see expensive cars outside and a party inside. In addition to stalls with fruit, vegetables, cheese and meat, which are now quoting (high) prices, you can sip oysters, drink smoothies or craft beer at snack bars. You can find fine sushi and Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese,Korean or Central Asian delicacies. Something similar is happening in functional buildings that have been converted into “food courts”, such as the “Depo” near the Belarusian train station. It was once a warehouse for trams and trolleybuses. Now beautiful people can be admired feasting here.

Modernization is part of what Moscow call "Sobyanization" after Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who has been in office for eleven years.

Under the technocrat, who comes from Western Siberia, streets are constantly paved, sidewalks paved with granite, playgrounds renewed and lots of surveillance cameras installed.

Old kiosks that sprawled around the metro entrances were torn down in "Nights of Long Excavators";

the few new ones are in pavilions that are supposed to be reminiscent of the Paris of the Belle Époque.