- •Moon’s cooking takes inspiration from the recipes of grandmothers and mothers.
- •Classic dishes are interpreted in a contemporary way.
- •Childhood memories and home cooking provide inspiration.
- •The menu changes with the seasons while keeping its core values.
- •Moon aims to keep traditions alive, not reproduce them exactly.
Moon’s menu includes dishes that take many of us back to childhood: borscht, dumplings, buckwheat blinis, pike fishcake and Chicken Kiev. They are there for a reason.
When Roman Zaštšerinski and Igor Andrejev opened Moon in 2009, they wanted to serve familiar Slavic flavours in a new way. Their inspiration came not from elaborate cookbooks or forgotten luxury dishes, but from the recipes their grandmothers and mothers cooked at home.
To move forward, you have to look back
Roman has said that Moon grew out of a wish to make home cooking inspired by grandmothers’ recipes, interpreted for today. For him, tradition is not about repeating a recipe without changing a thing. It is about passing its spirit on to a new generation.
That is why Moon’s menu does not offer exact copies of grandmothers’ dishes. Instead, it brings familiar flavours together with contemporary techniques, seasonal ingredients and the restaurant’s own approach.
Food carries memories
Roman remembers the chicken broth of his childhood. His grandmother seasoned it with herbs and left a bay leaf in the soup. She served it with cabbage-and-egg pies and rice-and-minced-meat pies, which the children crumbled straight into the broth. These are simple memories, yet moments like these give rise to flavours we carry with us for a lifetime.
Roman also acknowledges that the same recipe never tastes quite the same in adulthood. Part of that flavour belongs to the memory itself: his grandmother’s kitchen, the old stove and meals shared together.
Tradition need not stand still
Moon’s kitchen does not seek to recreate the past exactly as it was. The aim is to preserve flavours that mean something and give them a contemporary form.
That is why Moon’s menu changes with the seasons, while familiar Slavic flavours and honest ingredients remain at its heart.
This balance between tradition and contemporary cooking has shaped Moon’s approach for more than fifteen years.
Moon’s cooking begins with a simple idea: good recipes do not grow old. At Moon, flavours familiar from grandmothers’ kitchens find a contemporary interpretation, bringing together tradition, seasonal ingredients and modern cooking techniques. The result is food that feels both familiar and new, carrying stories from one generation to the next.
