White Rabbit, Moscow

If you’re an avid watcher of Chef’s Table on Netflix, you may have come across the episode on Chef Vladimir Mukhin’s White Rabbit restaurant in Moscow, Russia. My boyfriend and I watched the episode in advance of our recent trip to the capital city, and made a reservation a few weeks before we arrived.

The anticipation was long and the excitement level was high. We knew the background: Chef Mukhin is on a lifelong quest to resurrect forgotten Russian cuisine from history books and recreate these dishes into modern recipes. As a result, White Rabbit has been named one of the world’s best restaurants on multiple occasions.

We arrived at the restaurant and were greeted, surprisingly coldy, by the waitstaff and led to a corner table to be seated. Our waitress was abrupt and dismissive, taking 25 minutes to ask if we would like any cocktails to start and another 25 minutes to bring them to the table. After nearly an hour, we were finally able to put our food order in. We tried to be understanding of her situation; it was a full-house on a Saturday night after all, but it seemed fairly odd to wait an hour and a half to receive the first bites of food from a borderline rude waitress at a restaurant so highly acclaimed in the culinary world.

We ordered a plethora of signature menu items to have a wide sampling of the chef’s cooking. The food was innovative: horsemeat on tomato bread, jellied red king crab, rabbit patte and black truffle, boar cutlets with crayfish sauce and much more. We certainly had our favorite dishes, but the service left such a bad taste in our mouths the good-but-not-great dishes didn’t stand a chance of covering it up.

We couldn’t help but be disappointed by our experience. While it was a treat to see Chef’s Table come to life before our eyes, I recommend striking White Rabbit from your dinner bucket list.

White Rabbit

Smolenskaya Square

3, Moskva, Russia, 121099