A solid budget cafe that feels like home

I stumbled upon this cafe during my stay at Delta Izmailovo, and I'm excited to share my experience with you if you're looking for a casual bite to eat.

After trying the Swedish buffet at Mikhail Svetlov, I wanted to give this cafe a shot since it offers individual dishes to order. Plus, it's the same place that delivers food to your room via room service, which is super convenient.

The Matryoshka cafe is located near the entrance, right across from the souvenir shops, so we saw it every time we left the hotel.

Address: Moscow, Izmailovsky Highway, 71k4G-D, near Partizanskaya metro, on the first floor of the Gamma-Delta Izmailovo hotel complex (Delta entrance).

When you walk in, the menu is displayed right outside, so you can take a look before deciding what to order.

After checking the prices, we thought it was a good value, so we decided to try the meat-filled blini and scrambled eggs.

We split the portions with my relative, so it ended up being really budget-friendly for the two of us.

On our table, there was a tray with utensils, but on our subsequent visits, they were nowhere to be found (they'd removed them), and they would bring out individual utensils (metal forks, knives, and spoons) for each guest.

But the container with wet wipes was always present.

Impressions of the dishes

The scrambled eggs consisted of three eggs, and the meat in the blini seemed to be ground, easy to chew, and tasted like a mix of pork and beef.

We didn't order any drinks that time because we were drinking tea in our room.

Service

The inside was a bit stuffy, but sitting near the entrance was okay. The waiters looked a bit worn out, but they were polite, and it took around 10 minutes to get our food, so we asked them to bill us right away.

Interior

The decor is nice and festive, with small tables for two people and bigger ones with sofas. Sometimes they ask groups of two to move to smaller tables because this cafe caters to business groups, and the hotel has conference rooms, so we often saw groups of Russians with foreigners - English-speaking people, Chinese, Indians, and French.

They also have an interesting shelf with self-service stews and homemade pickles, and ornaments on the furniture.

They have beer and alcohol on the menu, but we don't drink, so we stuck to water.

Now, let me show you what else we got from the menu in this cafe.

Solyanka - with meat, olives (apparently), salty. Most of the dishes are salty, even a bit over-salted, but edible. They serve a good, fatty sour cream with the solyanka (you don't need to order it separately, it's included in the price).

Cartopchka po derevenski - baked, with a crust, delicious.

Grechka - thick, not overcooked, you can even taste the butter.

Apart from that, the svinina tusheonaya s ovoshami had almost no meat, just 2-3 pieces. The dish is mostly made up of zucchini and eggplants.

Pelmeni - choose between fried or boiled with broth, we chose fried. They serve sour cream with the pelmeni without extra charge (no need to order a topping separately).

Cartopchka zharenaya s gribyami i lukom - in oil, fatty, delicious, well-cooked - not raw and not burnt. They added a half of a salty cucumber to the potatoes.Mors - a cold, slightly sweet berry drink.

I had the noodle dish with a rich broth, half an egg, and some meat.

I've been back to this cafe a few times, and I'm glad I did - it's definitely worth a visit!