At Podvorye, a country restaurant favored by Vladimir Putin, peonies and zinnias
were blooming in profusion in the summer garden.
“Marina came in a red motorcar of an early ‘runabout’ type, operated by the butler very warily as if it were some fancy variety of corkscrew. She looked unwontedly smart in a man’s grey flannels and sat holding the palm of her gloved hand on the knob of a clouded cane as the car, wobbling a little, arrived to the very edge of picnic site, a picturesque glade in an old pinewood cut by ravishingly lovely ravines. A strange pale butterfly passed from the opposite side of the woods, along the Lugano dirt road, and was followed presently by a landau….”
--Vladimir Nabokov in Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, 1969
Nabokov’s Ada is a novel that demands to be read during the dog days of summer, preferably on a velvet couch while drinking cold black tea spiced with black peppercorns and red currants. Ada and Van Veen’s cousinly love affair evolves slowly and deliciously during a languid summer at their family’s romantic country retreat. Even though Ardis, a three-story pile of “pale brick and purplish stone,” is located in some mysterious land, not quite Russia, nor Europe or America, it is in spirit a summer place that evokes the dreamlike world of the old dachas built during the reign of Peter the Great.
Dacha means “something given”—and the term came to be used for the property given by the tsar to his most loyal retainers. Some dachas were simple log cottages or izbas, others were small palaces—but all of them were places of retreat from the world, where long hot summers might be spent drowsing in bedrooms on cool sheets, chasing butterflies in wildflower meadows, and drinking, as Nabokov wrote, “the cold sweet tea of childhood".
I was thinking about all this as we drove slowly through the sleepy town of Pushkina, just a few miles from St. Petersburg. With the sunlight filtering through tall trees on moldering neoclassic buildings, it felt light years away from the urban thrum. We had spent the morning at Tsarskoye Selo, the Baroque summer palace of Catherine I, the favorite second wife of Peter the Great. It was painted the most improbable shade of bright blue by their egomaniacal daughter, Elizabeth, to match her eyes, it is said. Once compared to a “celestial constellation,” the palace resembles an elaborate turquoise and white confection. The Great Hall or ballroom shimmers with gold leaf and mirrors reflecting upon themselves, and the famous Amber Study, whose glowing panels were plundered and lost, forever, it seems, during World War II, has been painstaking restored by a battalion of craftsmen. But in the Park surrounding all this opulence there are semi-wild, romantic spots with charming pavilions and little bridges that must have enticed courtiers to ramble, perhaps aimlessly, on a summer day.
Delicious fresh salted vegetables were pickled for 24 hours in a brine flavored
with garlic, dill, hot peppers and leaves such as black currant and cherry.
A little futher on we turned into the driveway of Podvorye, a rambling log izba with a tower crowned by a stained glass cock. Podvorye, which means “coach house,” is really a restaurant, but its summer garden of crimson peonies and fanciful decor—wild horse heads serve as roof finials--evokes the dreamy spirit of an old country dacha. Which is great, because within minutes of sitting down at a long trestle table and pouring the first of many glasses of Russian Standard vodka, we were besieged by busloads of singing Venezuelan tourists and folk dancers stomping on the unpolished wood floors.
Is Podvorye a tourist trap? Yes, but of the most delectable sort. It is said to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favorite restaurant—he was born in St. Petersburg and you can order the same menu he had on his birthday—and the guest book includes Prince Charles, French President Jacques Chirac, First Lady Lora (sic) Bush, actors Steve Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow, Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran, and fashion designers Jil Sander and John Galliano.
But if you can get past all this, it is a perfectly wonderful place to eat authentic Russian food. Podvorye’s cookbook, naturally sold in the souvenir shop, shows owner Sergei Guttsayt in Kuznechny market, poring over boxes of bright lingonberries, examining strings of dried mushrooms and sizing up fine cuts of pork. Guttsayt, who is rotound, pink-cheeked and vaguely aristocratic looking, has his own summer estate in Crimea and the red and white wine on the table is made in his vineyards.
Here’s what we had for lunch:
Beef with spicy sour cream dressing was mixed with sauteed onion and topped
with sour cream flavored with a special Georgian herb mixture and cranberries.
Boiled beef topped with a garlicky sour cream sauce. The sauce is spiced with with freshly ground black pepper, coriander leaves and a mixture of dried basil, hot red pepper, parsley, celery, dill, coriander, laurel leaf, mint and marjoram widely used in Georgian and Armenian cuisine. The dish was strewn with tiny cranberries, very tart and much smaller than our own.
Earthenware bowls of delicious fresh salted cucumbers, tomatoes, huge garlic cloves and scapes. The tomatoes and garlic were pickled for 24 hours in a brine flavored with dill stalks and flowers, black currant leaves and hot peppers; the brine for the cucumbers included horseradish root and leaves as well as dill and other wild leaves.
Plates of thinly sliced roast pork with cucumbers, and bowls of mushrooms baked in sour cream.
A superb sorrel soup or green borshch, thick with fresh sorrel leaves, potatoes and hardboiled eggs, topped with sour cream and thinly sliced scallions. The soup was sour and very peppery.
Golubitsy, or cabbage and grape leaves stuffed with beef, pork and rice, simmered in a sauce of sour cream , tomato and fresh greens.
To die for pale green pistachio ice cream, rich and nutty tasting, served with tender blini filled with dried lingonberries in a pool of the delicious honey that had eluded us at Kuznechny Market a few days earlier.
Later, perusing the menu on Podvorye’s website, I was struck by what we didn’t have a chance to try: paprika (red peppers) pickled in honey, wild quail stuffed with lingonberries and apple, chicken Taback, pressed and grilled Caucasus style, sturgeon (Beluga) shashlik (on a skewer), and the "drunken desserts"—preserves of fruit like mulberries and cornelian cherries in liqueur, homemade at Guttsayt’s own summer place in Crimea.
Podvorye Restaurant, 16 Filtrovskoye Avenue, Pavlovsk, St. Petersburg, Russia 196625. Telephone: 812-466-85-44. Web: www.podvorye.ru