St Petersburg: Restaurant Gusto (September 2010)

My spouse and I dined at Restaurant Gusto for dinner in early September 2010. Gusto is an Italian restaurant on a pedestrian-only street called Kuznetskiy Most. We were able to use a credit card there, and the prices were reasonable and the portions large (about $50 total for two bowls of pasta and some drinks). Gusto has both indoor seating and two areas for outdoor seating: one inside a tent with sides and one underneath umbrellas but otherwise exposed to the elements. The tented area has heaters, and there are also plaid wool blankets available to keep you warm. On a side street not far from Moscow Rail Station, Gusto is part of a group of up-market Italian eateries in St. Petersburg, and it is unquestionably one of the best places for proper Italian food in the city. Somewhere between a cafe and a restaurant, Gusto has deceptively simple interiors that nonetheless are luxurious enough for the relatively high prices on the menu to come as no surprise. Fortunately, they are entirely justified by the fare on offer, which combines perfectly executed but somewhat bland classics to appeal to its more conservative patrons with several pleasingly original creations from the well-known Italian chef. While most of the more expensive Italian restaurants in St. Petersburg seem to concentrate on seafood to impress their wealthy clients, Gusto offers more rural Italian cuisine, with imaginative combinations of vegetables and mushrooms to the fore. The wine list is also noteworthy, and Gusto's hi-tech storage system makes it possible to order a huge number of vintages by the glass. An up-market Italian restaurant near Moskovsky Station, Gusto was the place President Medvedev chose to dine on a 2010 visit to St. Petersburg. Covering two floors, Gusto serves up simple, classic Italian food with top-class ingredients and a few innovative authorial twists from its well-known Italian chef. The restaurant also boasts a hi-tech wine-storage system providing a huge range of vintages by the glass.