Anyone for the Anyway Cafe?

E, K, and I mixed business and pleasure at the East Village's Anyway Cafe tonight for some "French and Russian cuisine." I'm a sucker for any place that has horseradish-infused vodka and caviar on the menu!

We had a nice cozy corner table and shared a pitcher of said horseradish vodka and a really fabulous appetizer platter (the zakuski, a steal at $13!) which featured tasting portions of a carrot salad, beet salad, liver, eggs with caviar, house-marinated gravlax, some sort of trout pate, and a mesclun salad. Though neither K nor E cared for the liver, I was happy to have my April liver-fix. The horseradish vodka complemented the platter nicely.

For dinner, I ordered "Pelmeni Filled with Salmon & Caviar in a Light Cream Sauce," E had "Smoked Chicken & Mushroom Julienne with Mashed Potatoes," and K took the "Crepes with Wild Mushrooms & Ricotta Cheese." Though everyone was enthusiastic about their orders, as it often the case (either because I order brilliantly or because I decide to fully embrace my order with enthusiasm regardless of how successful it is), I liked my dish the best. Thin dumplings filled with delicate (and not overcooked!) salmon, resting in a light and buttery citrusy, creme fraiche sauce (with some dill, I believe), and topped with a generous serving of salmon caviar. While I much prefer raw salmon to cooked salmon (and the opposite with tuna, though by cooked I mean lightly seared) and while I'm never one to order ikura at a sushi bar, there's something about pairing poached salmon with those little squishy orange explosions of salty fishiness that makes me like both quite a bit.

While all in all, the meal came to about $30/head, one has to remember the total included about 8 shots of good vodka (so roughly 2.67 shots each, which we sipped like the dignified diners we are) and a fairly incredible variety of flavors courtesy of the tasting plate. The service was great and our waiter kept the baskets of Russian black bread (with dill butter!) coming to the table. (This does, however, beg the question: if I have a lukewarm or unpleasant dining experience, am I going to post it on the blog? I don't think so. I mean, the blog is a place for me to record positive memories, be they recipes or restaurants, so I can return to them when I get the urge; it wouldn't really help me to bash a restaurant, and anyone who's reading the blog can, I'm sure, find bashes of any truly bash-worthy restaurant on yelp.com and places like that.)

While I'm not quite ready to put Anyway Cafe on the sidebar yet, I will definitely come back here the next time we're trying to be adventurous and stray from our other East Village standards.