I’ve been hosting a monthly Russian Language Dinner through a local nonprofit for something like 9 years now, and I need some new ideas for restaurant locations - we tend to go to the same few places all the time, and it’s time to branch out. So if you would be so kind, I’d love to hear about your favorite places that meet some or all of the following criteria:
– Reasonably priced
– Centrally located (once in a while we’ll go to Greektown, or somewhere around Clark & Diversey, but generally the few times I’ve tried to pick a place outside of downtown-ish, nobody shows up - I tried Chinatown last month, and literally nobody showed up)
– A cuisine with wide general appeal (anything Mediterranean tends to go over well, but Slavs and spicy food are a hilarious combination - we did Indian Garden once, and wimpy as I am, I didn’t think the food was that spicy, but the Russians were dying - heck, they think Georgian food is spicy because it has garlic in it!)
– Not so loud that you can’t hear your table-mates; the whole point is to speak Russian, after all, and loud places are especially difficult for the non-native speakers
Cuisines of the former Soviet Union/East Blok are by no means a requirement, though people would probably appreciate them; I’d love to find a Polish or Ukrainian place that isn’t too far off the beaten path and doesn’t close by 8 pm during the week, for example, but I don’t know of any. But if there’s some hidden treasure I haven’t discovered yet, by all means, do tell.
(Someday I should drag everyone to Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant, though - that place is a hoot. It’s healthy in the sense that everything is made from scratch…to whatever extent that any food made of encased meat, breaded, fried in butter, topped with sour cream, topped with bacon, or all of the above can be healthy.)