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Located between the airport and the city in the area where the diplomats and rich have their villas, the Vlad Inn is one of the best restaurants of Vladivostok. It serves international cuisine with a focus on American dishes and some Russian specialities. The food is great, but bring a heavy purse.

This Canadian-managed hotel/restaurant opened in 1993. The two-storey building is reminiscent of the prefab temporary housing on Sakhalin, so we’re not surprised if the general director tells us all the construction material was imported from Canada. However the interior of the restaurant is rather cosy, some ten tables are nicely set from early morning until late evening, complete with folded serviettes and side plates.

There’s a bar with a few bar stools that is okay for a drink before dinner, but you’re unlikely to end up there for an after dinner drink as it closes at the same time as the restaurant. The dishwasher for glasses built into the bar makes a somewhat irritating noise.

Straight after the waitress (yes, she speaks English!) brings the menu – available in English - she pours us a glass of ice-cold filtered water. For starters, Vlad Inn has salads (a classical Caesar salad and a Greek salad for 9$, a tomato/cucumber salad for 7$, a green side-salad for 4$ and a coleslaw salad for 3$), just two soups (French onion soup and Borsh, 6$), lots of fish (smoked oysters for 6$, assorted fish for 25$, shrimps (13$) and scallops (9$) sauteed in garlic and wine, bacon wrapped scallops, crab cocktail, red caviar, pickled herring, breaded shrimps and squid with tzatziki), meat (chicken wings and fingers (10$), lamb with rosemary and mushroom), sauteed mushrooms (6$), potato skins (8$) and escargot (9$). As we can’t make up our mind the chef, who is also the general director, offers to do a mixture of four starters and a Caesar salad for 40$. The Caesar salad is just as it is supposed to be, served with grated Parmesan cheese, croutons and a tasty dressing. The mix of starters comes with five different sauces, nice, but it was difficult not to mix them up because they were served on one plate. We love the bacon wrapped scallops; the bacon is crispy and the scallops juicy. We also found the lamb wonderful; the fact that our taste buds missed the taste because it is almost unavailable in restaurants on Sakhalin contributed to that. The chicken fingers and breaded tiger shrimps are okay.

Having the same fish on Sakhalin, people coming from the island will probably ignore the fish dishes, although there are some attractive varieties such as minced salmon and scallops, prawn and salmon Thai style. There are also some combination dishes of meat and fish.

The US imported beef comes highly recommended. Eight cuts are served from ordinary steak (22$) to fillet mignon (26$ or 32$ for a larger portion). We have the Japanese style ‘terriyaki steak’, which is served in a tasty orange-flavoured soy sauce but was a bit tough and far from the medium/rare we requested; it’s well done.

North American selections offered are roast chicken with honey (16$), Cajun chicken (11$), beef dip (11 or 13$), hamburger (10$), Quesadilla of beef, chicken or shrimp (11 to 13$).

Very interesting are the flambés, served Thursday through Sunday from 17 to 22.30 hours. How about chicken Florentine in Parmesan brandy cream sauce with spinach, mushrooms and onions (27$), salmon flambeed in sambuca (27$), pork medaillons in a rich sauce flambeed in spiced rum, or prawns in vodka sauce with orange liqueur (28$)? Other variants are flambe desserts (fruit or crepe suzette, 12$ for one person, 15$ for two persons) and flambe coffees (9$). We take the flambe of bananas, served with ice cream a great way to conclude a meal.

Last but not least on the menu are the ‘chef’s heritage favourites’. The Canadian born chef is an Italian citizen and put a few Italian dishes on the menu such as garlic toast (9$), spaghetti Bolognese (14$), fettuccini Napoli (noodles in a white wine sauce with prawns and scallops for 18$), eggplant grilled with Parmesan and layered with smoked ham (13$) and of course pizza (19$ for a large one with 3 toppings).

If you don’t like fish or meat, there is nothing on the menu, but with the flexibility shown it is likely the chef will prepare something yummy.

Drinks are not listed – everything is available. The wine list comprises mainly of French and American wines, some of which are exclusive, the most exclusive being a Baron Philippe Rothschild, Curruades de Lafite from 1988 for 500$. Bottles aged three to five years cost 15 to 47 dollars. Some more exclusive (from 32$) are Saint Emillion from 1998 (125$) and Stag Leaps, Merlot (125$). For house wine Vlad Inn selected the not very exciting Paul Masson from California (4$ for a glass, 18$ a litre bottle). Others are served by the glass - no prices mentioned.

The service was excellent. All through the meal our water glasses were filled up, the waitresses smiled, all spoke English and were very helpful in giving a detailed description of dishes.

A small minus is that the same CD with popular pop was played over and over again – one of the songs being a Christmas song (we visited at the beginning of February).

Vlad Inn has a separate breakfast menu – probably the most extensive in the Russian Far East (6$ to 13$). Eggs with anything you can think of aside, French toast, continental breakfast, BLT, croissant filled with spinach and cheese, Belgian waffle, English muffin, pancakes and that’s not all. The good thing is you can order breakfast any time, so if you arrive at the airport in the late morning, the restaurant is a good stop for breakfast before heading to town. On Sunday, Vlad Inn does a brunch, although the brunch menu is comprised of egg dishes and basically doesn’t add anything to the nicer breakfast menu. If you need lots of coffee to wake up, avoid the expensively priced cappuccino of 4$.

All in all Vlad Inn is a nice restaurant with excellent service offering very good food. It is a very nice break from restaurants in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

© 2002 Petra Wijnsema

Last update: 13 February 2003