THE DISH: Market Place

Market Place//24 Nevsky Prospekt//Tel. 8 (981) 854 4833//Open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.//Labels in Russian and English//Dinner for two with beer 1,129 rubles ($36)

By Shura Collinson

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: September 26, 2012 (Issue # 1728)

Upstairs, downstairs

Don’t make the mistake, when visiting Market Place, of lingering downstairs. Once you have selected your meal, cafeteria-style, from the open cooking stations — choose from salads and wraps, pasta and wok dishes, a grill station and meat and fish dishes — situated around the large, brightly lit first-floor room, head upstairs to enjoy it.

That’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with the first floor, with its exposed brick walls, wooden floor and jungle of plants on the broad windowsills. The Bershka clothing store that occupied these premises until recently is unrecognizable in Market Place. Instead of rows of wet-look leggings and leather jackets, visitors are greeted by a large barrow of fruit and vegetables and jars of pickles, illustrating the cafe’s name. Don’t be fooled, though: This is not reflected in the menu, with no choice, as such, for vegetarians, who might find a meat-free main course at the pasta and wok station if they are lucky, but are unlikely to do so anywhere else.

The only familiar element that remains from Bershka is the staircase, through the center of which an installation of cheese-graters, pans and utensils — all painted white — now dangles, suspended from the ceiling.

Follow the beckoning whisks upstairs to the far more appealing second-floor dining room, where the harsh light of downstairs is subdued by wicker lampshades and enhanced by candlelight, and the bustling sounds of brisk frying are replaced by the strains of soft female jazz vocals. Here, instead of the motorway canteen-style layout below, there is just one counter displaying cakes, cookies and other desserts. Coffee (65 rubles, $2), beer (114 rubles/$3.65 for half a liter) and wine are on sale, as well as sangria for 110 rubles ($3.50) per glass.

From up here, where the expansive windows offer rare views out onto Kazan Cathedral and Nevsky Prospekt (the corner table offers a particularly good vista), it may no longer seem important that the solyanka soup (75 rubles, $2.40) was overly salty or that the potato in it had already turned a little mushy. The slightly cool temperature of the side dish of buckwheat porridge with carrot and mushrooms (48 rubles, $1.50), may fade into insignificance, and the marinated chanterelles with onion, dill and garlic (57 rubles, $1.80) may well seem a little less bland than they did downstairs. So what if a bowl of salad (90 rubles, $2.90) is fridge-cold and lacking in flavor, despite signs declaring that the cafe uses produce grown organically (an ambitious claim in itself in Russia) in the Leningrad Oblast? And yes, the pasta Arrabiata (148 rubles, $4.70), despite being firm, piping hot and freshly cooked, could have benefited from a few more fresh chili peppers, but ultimately, there are few places on Nevsky Prospekt that offer meals at these kinds of prices — and with generous portions too — never mind with a view this good.

After all, Market Place — part of a chain that also has branches on Vasilyevsky Island, Ploshchad Konstitutsii and Moskovksy Prospekt — is not masquerading as a gourmet restaurant (though the beef cutlet with salted cucumbers and melted cheese, for 105 rubles/$3.35, was hard to fault). On the contrary, it has forged a new niche for itself, joining the new phenomenon of stolovayas or canteens on Nevsky Prospekt, following in the footsteps of more basic establishments like the boldly named Stolovaya No. 1 almost opposite it, and another next to the Kolizei movie theater at the other end of the street, but with a slightly hipper interior than the average no-frills canteen.

After years of Nevsky being a desert for decent, reasonably priced eateries and frequented only by hungry tourists who didn’t know any better, the novelty of being able to get something to eat on the city’s most famous street is a welcome trend. And judging by the spontaneous rush of diners on a recent Sunday night, including the occasional backpacker — though they sadly almost all made the all-too-easy mistake of failing to venture upstairs — Market Place could do well. In fact, if only the rather surly, unhelpful chefs at the cooking stations and cashiers at the tills would learn some basic manners from the far more personable khaki-shirt-clad staff working the restaurant floor, it could do very well indeed.