Borscht on the fifth floor

Why comfort food usually lives downstairs

There is a straightforward explanation, and it is about economics rather than taste. Borscht, dumplings and cutlets are dishes with long preparation and short bills. An hour of stock adds nothing to the price; hand-shaping dumplings costs cook-time that no markup recovers.

A room with a view is expensive. Putting inherently inexpensive food into it is awkward arithmetic. So the world settled into a pattern: the view is sold with fish and steak, and comfort food goes where the rent is lower.

When the combination does work

There are three situations where the view and the food add up rather than argue.

• A mixed table. One person wants borscht, another a steak, a third a wok, a fourth only a drink. A narrow menu breaks that table; a wide one with an Eastern European section holds it together.
• A long evening. Arrive for sunset, eat at eight, stay for shisha until midnight — one address instead of three, and one drive instead of two in the dark.
• The first week after moving here. The moment when you equally want to see the island and eat something familiar. Those two wishes diverge later, but in the first week they coincide exactly.

What changes in the cooking itself

A fifth-floor kitchen differs from a basement one in more than the window.

Portions get smaller. In this heat, and after climbing five floors, nobody wants a plate sized for a winter lunch. We shrank almost everything in the Eastern European section, and it turned out to be right — though it caused arguments at the time.

More acid. Local beetroot is sweeter, and at thirty degrees sourness reads as refreshing. Borscht here has to be sharper than it would be at home, or it lands heavy.

Colder service. Sour cream separate and chilled, herbs added at the last moment, and a cold borscht in summer treated as a normal idea rather than an experiment — worth asking for.

What to order around the sunset

The practical part. Sunset is 6:00–6:30 PM, and the food has to meet it.

• Sit at five and order immediately. Then the main course arrives while the light is turning. Arriving at six and ordering at six is the one combination that has you eating in the dark.
• Borscht first. It is quicker out of the kitchen, and in heat it works better before the main rather than after.
• Share the dumplings. They are heavier than they look, especially in this climate.
• Save the syrniki. They are just as good at ten in the evening, and they are a reason to stay rather than a way to start.

How it works at ours

We are on Jl. Batu Belig, fifth floor, facing west. The Eastern European section is part of a wider menu rather than the whole of it. This is a description, not a recommendation.

Borscht with beef and sour cream at 135,000. Pelmeni and vareniki from 105,000, shaped in the kitchen — which is why they are slow at a busy hour. Cheburek, syrniki, cutlets, beef tongue, five stroganoffs.

No cover charge and no minimum spend, which means you are not paying separately for the view — and that is probably the real answer to the question in the first section. The kitchen runs to 2:30 AM, the venue to 4.

If you want to compare

The island has plenty of Russian and Eastern European kitchens, and many of them do individual dishes better than we do — particularly the ones that do nothing else. We compared them with ratings and prices in the island guide.

What the label "Russian restaurant" actually covers is here, and how this cuisine changes in the tropics is here.

Questions we get asked