A Brief Round-Up of the City’s New Openings

The title is disarmingly direct: fish and wine are the point. Behind the project is the team responsible for Almaty’s La Barca and Big Apple — enough to suggest a kitchen with a sharp instinct for product and a menu built on clarity, confidence and restraint. The iced counters make the first impression: oysters, Kamchatka crab, sea urchins, dorado, octopus, seabass, flounder — arranged with the kind of quiet assurance that needs no further embellishment. That same logic carries through the menu, where tartares and carpaccios give way to pasta, soups and fish from the grill.

One of two recent openings in the capital from the Good Project group, Asai is led by brand chef Azamat Rakhmetullaev, known also for Eva Wine Cafe. The concept turns on local produce, though seen through a more contemporary lens and sharpened by a taste for unexpected combinations. The menu moves with ease between the recognisable and the surprising: horse-meat kespe sorpa with pickled shiitake, bалык sorpa enriched with a broth of Borovoe crayfish, local trout with carrot purée and curry, manty with oxtail, and a «bird’s milk» dessert made from kaymak. The interior sustains the same idea of local grounding, with works by contemporary Kazakh artists lining the walls.

Also part of Good Project, Nana is a Caucasian restaurant with chef Mishni Liparteliani at the helm. The format is clear, generous and broadly appealing — well suited to family dinners, but just as comfortable with larger tables. The menu draws on the classics that rarely need introduction: satsivi, pkhali, khinkali with veal or spinach and mushroom, dolma, lobio, chkmeruli, chakhokhbili. There is, however, room for a little invention. The matsoni cheesecake with young walnut preserve belongs firmly on the must-order list.

A new project has taken over the second floor of Anatoly Chyorny’s Negroni: Tash, where Uzbek cooking is recast in the register of comfort food. The idea was to create a space that feels looser and more accessible — an easy counterweight to the restaurant downstairs. The menu stays close to the classics, resisting the urge to overcomplicate: chuchvara, khanum, plov, and other familiar dishes, presented with a welcome sense of restraint. One detail, however, sets the tone rather neatly. This spring, from 12pm to 5pm, women are offered khash on the house — framed here, almost inevitably, as a wellness-minded gesture «for collagen replenishment.»

A compact but quietly ambitious venture from chef Adilgazy Koilybayev, whose background includes the bakery programme at the St. Regis. The format is that of a craft bakery, centred on fresh baking and a genuinely product-driven approach. The menu is straightforward: tartine sandwiches with chicken and tomatoes, cinnamon buns, and a core selection of breads baked each day. Yet the real draw lies not only in what sits on the counter, but in the process behind it. Lievito Madre is evolving in real time. Pop-ups and collaborations form a visible part of that evolution, with recent partnerships including Batyrkhan Kaztayev of La Creme Group and Pasta Lab. It is the sort of place that rewards attention: new ideas, new collaborations and fresh bakes appear almost in motion, and that sense of motion is part of what makes it so interesting to follow.

A-storia, from The Chef Group and chef Artyom Marchenko, has opened within easy reach of Zina and The Chef Delicatessen. Inside, A-storia opens onto three generously proportioned dining rooms and a menu grounded in Mediterranean cooking. The chef’s signature is legible throughout: familiar ingredients are given a subtle but telling shift — flounder paired with chimichurri, broccoli deepened with a nut sauce, Lebanese pastries filled with shrimp. One detail lends the project an added sense of character: according to the team, much of the restaurant’s furniture was made by Artyom himself — a reminder that his devotion to craft extends as naturally to carpentry as it does to food.

Grace has taken over the space once occupied by one of the capital’s earliest Marrone Rosso restaurants, which remained at Keruen for more than ten years. The new project turns to the familiar grammar of European cooking, though not without a few local inflections of its own: ravioli with horse meat and parmesan mousse, an irimshik bake served with sour cream and berries, and a sorrel panna cotta with strawberry tartare. The sense, though, is that the team is investing in more than the menu alone. Grace appears equally intent on building a broader gastronomic programme, with a series of dinners centred on visiting chefs already in the works. Among the first announced is Dmitry Golenin of Sage, Moscow.

The Almaty team behind Vanilla has opened a miniature outpost on Turan Avenue — for now, a to-go address only, though unmistakably stamped with the same sensibility that made it a favourite in Almaty. The offering is pared back to the essentials of an urban ritual: coffee, pastries from the counter, and drips. The suggestion, however, is that this is merely a prelude. A fully fledged café with seating is already in the works — and in the capital, the prospect has not gone unnoticed.

P. S. The abr group, meanwhile, continues to consolidate its presence at the Mega Silk Way food court. Alongside Cafeteria, Del Papa, Daredzhani and Coco, Jinau is expected to appear next, with chef Ruslan Zakirov in the leading role.

Images: restaurant websites and social media; Yandex Maps