Mari Vanna

Restaurant Mari Vanna. London

Mari Vanna® 's international expertise and management team welcomes you at Mari Vanna® Knightsbridge, offering the best of Russian cuisine and hospitality, and we shall be happy to receive your comments and reviews at our own Facebook Page "Mari Vanna London Knightsbridge Official".

Thanks to the talents of Russian-born and British-educated interior designer Yuna Megre, Mari Vanna is a marvel of old-fashioned Russian cooking in a setting that fleshes out the homely fantasy.

Waitresses in flowery domestic aprons invite you to eat comfort food in their “sitting room”, where flea market curios fill every inch: there’s ornate crockery, French lace, crystal from St Petersburg, lamps draped with fringed shawls, Lenin pins, antique boxing gloves, an old accordion and so on.

A visit to the bathrooms, where they play Russian folk songs and have installed old pull-chain toilets, is part of the adventure.

http://www.marivanna.ru

I nearly saw tsars at Russian restaurant Mari Vanna | Metro News

Restaurant review: Fairytale surroundings and folksy Russian charm go some way to making up for the incomprehensible and unpalatable menu at Mari Vanna in Knightsbridge.

There are several varieties of bread with herb butter (the almost-black, mulchy rye is particularly good) plus a vast basket of sushki, a kind of Russian pretzel that translates, with remarkable candour, as ‘dry little things’.

Beef strogonoff isn’t good: the meat tastes exhausted, its sour cream has clotted into something resembling Band-Aid-coloured cottage cheese, and serving it with buckwheat kasha, reeking of truffle oil, means that any taste it had has fled in  terror.

It’s testament to the design’s success that while you’re admiring the crocheted doilies and tart’s boudoir bathroom, you’re blissfully unaware that Ginza Project owns more than 70  restaurants, employs more than 5,000 people and has partners called things like Baltic Monolith.

Who am I to know if this is good Russian food or not?

Mari Vanna, London

Mari Vanna, London, restaurant review - Telegraph

“Fresh, light, soft and gentle, not bitter, Russian comfort food at its best,” was the expert opinion of a frequent traveller to St Petersburg.

Siberian pelmeni, wonton-style dumplings filled with pork and beef, were undersalted and anodyne (they too needed sour cream) but light and perfectly cooked.

By the time they brought the puddings – a gorgeously life-shortening slice of honey cake with seven layers of puff pastry, and an absurdly cute, pink and marshmallowy creation named Naked Heart, after the charity to which the proceeds are donated – the service had been transformed.

It’s like having lunch inside the head of a slumbering nine-year-old boy in Tomsk, pillowed by his babushka’s capacious ba-bosom, her murmured songs and half-whispered folk tales caressing his ear as he fantasises about owning a football club, rigging an election or having his countryman irradiated in a Piccadilly sushi bar.

But if you’re a maiden aunt from the shires with needles, yarn and a passing resemblance to Madam Brezhnev, you might find a new career along with the herring and borsch when you nip up to town in 50 weeks’ time.

Restaurant: Mari Vanna, London SW1 | Life and style | The Guardian

On arriving at Mari Vanna, a new Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge, the waiter handed us a menu and said, "This is a soft opening, so please excuse us if there is a wait for dishes or things go wrong."

The convention is that you don't review restaurants during a soft opening, the launch period during which friends, family and random passers-by try out the kitchen and service to check things are working.

Because the convention is also that, during a soft opening, restaurants don't charge full price.

But Mari Vanna seemed fully open for business: the website says nothing about soft openings, it wasn't mentioned when I booked and the prices seem to be full whack – at least, I hope they are: the mains lurk around £20, and your bill for dinner is certain to be some distance north of £100 for two.

This isn't really a surprise, because Mari Vanna is part of a small chain of theme restaurants, focusing on the idea of Russian nostalgia, and on this evidence they are wonderful.

Restaurant review: Mari Vanna, London | Jay Rayner | Life and style ...

Meal for two, including vodka and service £150 Spare a thought for the poor soul tasked with dusting the tchotchkes that cram the shelves of Mari Vanna in Knightsbridge.

Mari Vanna, the branch of a small chain with outposts in Moscow, St Petersburg and New York, bellows "I'm charming" at you until you surrender.

We order a bowl of pickles, which are big chunks of vinegar-cured crunchy things, and a couple of their pirogi, the classic bronze-burnished filled pastries.

At Mari Vanna it doesn't matter what month it is.

It says much for the food that it is the fabulous pastries, made of cream, sponge, cream, pastry and cream which bring lightness to the meal.

Mari Vanna | Restaurants in Knightsbridge, London

Judging by the guest list on Mari Vanna’s UK website, the London outpost of this extraordinary Russian restaurant ‘chain’ is as much a destination as the branches in New York, LA and Washington DC (St Petersburg and Moscow boast the Russian originals).

A trip here is certainly memorable.

During our lunchtime meal, the place was chock-a-block with Russian-speaking diners.

The booking procedure may seem Soviet-strict, but the welcome is warm, and service – by beautiful Russian staff – polite and attentive.

Tender beef stroganoff had just the right degree of paprika warmth, and sweet cherry dumplings paired with a shot of cherry-infused vodka proved an ideal end to a memorable meal.