eating and time
The latest in a string of Moscow concept restaurants, Bolshaya Gruzinskaya’s Chasy woos the watch-collecting subculture. It’s a refined mahogany-and-brass temple to all things temporal, offering an abridged menu of sushi and mayonnaise.
PHOTO GEORGY IVANOV / TEXT SONYA RINKUS feedback
At the beginning, there was a man with a noble idea: food and watches. Put watches on the wall and behind glass cases, carry watch magazines, play watch ads on the flat screens and then serve everyone dinner — it’s so gimmicky, it just might work! So, Chasy was launched on the crowded culinary street of Bolshaya Gruzinskaya, filling the concept niche for eating and time in Moscow. Surprisingly enough, in practice, they’ve done about as well as could be expected with this unusual premise, at least in terms of design. Management, which is also the brains behind Teatralnoye Cafe, has created a real lady of an eatery. Chasy is reminiscent of an Art Deco train station, with high ceilings, brass fittings and mahogany furniture upholstered with deep burgundy leather. They’ve clearly spent money the way your rich, antique watch-collecting grandfather would, on quality over quantity. There’s a few carefully selected, but clearly expensive accessories: a stained glass mural from Germany on the ceiling, framed antique maps from Sweden on the walls, a grandfather clock from Amsterdam standing in the main hall. In a restaurant scene full of nouveau riche clutter, Chasy offers a refreshingly modest, “old money” approach to interior design, although this is still Moscow and they will still tell you how much everything costs if you really want to know. “The stained glass was 20,000 euro,” said the PR manager. It makes sense that a haunt for watch-collectors would be steeped in finer things: as a subculture, they’re a lot better off than the Goths who loiter by Chistiye Prudy metro. Stocked with copies of Moi Chasy — there’s a magazine called Moi Chasy! — and preparing to host exhibits by luxury watch designers, Chasy is designed for the ambitious men who want to control time as well as keep track of it. What about the rest of us? Those not fascinated by watches will turn to eating and with eating comes disappointment. Here, Chasy became last and derivative. Taking into account that it’s only an eatery, and that they’re still working out the kinks before the official Nov. 23 opening, it’s nonetheless evident that the high quality design standards do not much extend to the kitchen. Between us, my friend chose worse: a partially soggy green salad with fried salmon (340 rubles); a boring stack of eggplant, mozzarella and vegetables (265 rubles); and deep-fried Brie in cranberry sauce (270 rubles), which sounded lovely on the menu but tasted like set decoration. At this point, my companion remarked that, at times like these, she suspected that restaurants weren’t restaurants at all, but a cover for something else, maybe a watch-laundering organization. Furthermore, the food doesn’t fit in conceptually. What about antique watches suggests a full sushi menu? “Everyone wants sushi in Moscow,” explained the PR manager simply. I took on the Japanese menu, choosing passable miso soup (115 rubles) and the California (265 rubles) and Thailand (255 rubles) rolls, which, while generally acceptable, suffered from an over-enthusiastic deployment of mayonnaise. Chasy could really transcend the riff-raff here by not catering to base desires for sushi and mayo. Ditto on excising the generic chill-out background music. Our desserts of peach cake (120 rubles) and chocolate mousse (100 rubles), both baked on the premises, were probably nourishing, but not exciting. In all, eating dinner was like kissing your brother — going through the motions without feeling anything special, hopefully. This fault, however, is not terminal, especially in a city that loves a good theme restaurant, and Chasy is still trying to establish itself among the many culinary options of Bolshaya Gruzinskaya (Botanika, Macaroni, Shishah). One way they are going to stand out is by offering a breakfast menu from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. If that hook doesn’t work, well, they still have a strong watch-loving fan base at the end of the day. |
