Found a great, if very strange, restaurant on Sunday night. Went there with three other teachers.

It's called the Simple Cafe (Or 'Simply a Cafe' it can also be translated as), in the China Town part of the city. It's under the ground, like everywhere decent in Moscow, through a seedy little doorway. From the outside it looks shut, or possibly shut down.

It's not simply a cafe, though. It's not even a cafe. It's a restaurant. Also (I hear you groaning), it's a karaoke restaurant. This made me laugh because the only two groups of people in the restaurant were a) me and my friends, who aren't that hot at singing in Russian, and b) a group of deaf people!

One of our party was a vegetarian, and wanted to know what she could safely eat on the menu. This led to a great conversation (all in Russian) with our waitress, reassuring me that this was indeed an authentic Russian restaurant:
Liz: I'm a vegetarian.
Waitress: What?
Liz: I'm a ve-ge-tar-ian.
Waitress: What?
Me (trying to be helpful, with my marginally better language skills): She doesn't eat meat.
Waitress: She doesn't eat meat?
Me: Right.
Waitress: What about fish?
Liz: No, no fish.
Waitress (pointing to page on menu): This, this is all meat. (Turns page) This is all meat. (Turns page) This is all meat. (Long pause) You can have a salad. You will have this salad.

Needless to say, the salad came a good twenty minutes before the other three (meat) dishes. I had pork with cheese, surprisingly tasty.

Oh. The other great thing about the restaurant was the special weekend beer prices: 18 roubles. Now, that's the same price as a bottle of beer from a kiosk, and 52 roubles cheaper than a beer from the club next door to Simply a Cafe.