Delicious and Different

Yesterday I broke my rule about eating out at restaurants during the week.  There was a rather unusual place about which I have read and that I wanted to try out.

To get there I took the Metrobus north up Insurgentes Avenue to the Buenavista stop.  Walking a couple blocks from there took me to the heart of the neighborhood of Santa María la Ribera.  A few years ago I wrote about this neighborhood.  When the area was first developed in the late 1800s, it stood at the edge of the city, and it became a very exclusive, upper-class district.  As the Mexico City grew and surrounded Santa María, the wealthy moved to newer neighborhoods.  Once beautiful mansions became crowded tenements. Santa María became dilapidated and dangerous.  In recent years a slow process of gentrification has set in, although I doubt that it will ever attain the trendiness of Condesa or Roma Norte... and perhaps that's a good thing.

As I walked around Santa María la Ribera it seemed to have an authentic, small town atmosphere.  It is an odd mixture of run-down ugliness, picturesqueness, and flashes of beauty.  There were a couple of disreputable types about, but I didn't see any beggars or homeless people.  No one was sleeping on the sidewalks.  At least in broad daylight, the neighborhood seemed perfectly safe.

Many of the fine old mansions still stand in varying states of repair.

      
The jewel of the neighborhood is its central plaza, a lovely, green park.

Set in the middle of the park is an architectural wonder, the Morisco Kiosk.

The structure was built as the Mexican Pavilion for the 1884 New Orleans World's Fair.  It was then disassembled and brought back to Mexico.  Like the neighborhood, the kiosk fell into disrepair, but in 2003 it was completely restored.

But returning to the original subject... I came here to eat at unique restaurant that seems an oddity in this very Mexican "colonia".  Occupying a street corner, facing the park, is Kolobok, a Russian restaurant!  

I have been to Polish and Ukrainian restaurants back home, and I have enjoyed the food.  Russian cuisine is quite similar.

I started off, however, with something that is not Russian.  The restaurant has a reputation for its "empanadas", so I ordered one filled with cheese and potato.  (At least my choice of filling was sort of Slavic.)  It was very tasty.

I then had "solyanka" soup, an interesting combination of beef broth, ham, noodles and pickles.

 My main course was "golubtsy"... known to us as stuffed cabbage roll.

I won't say that it was the best cabbage roll that I have ever eaten, but it was very good.  The sides that I selected were cabbage salad... it was sort cross between sauerkraut and cole slaw... and "ensalada rusa" (Russian salad).  "Ensalada rusa" is actually a Spanish dish.  It's their version of potato salad.  However the addition of chopped pickles gave this a distinctive flavor.  

Finally for dessert... a slice of honey cake!

Decadently delicious!

I will definitely return to Kolobok on future trips!