How Astana and Almaty’s best restaurants and bars are selected — a rigorous, multi-stage process involving AI, 15,000 Yandex Go users and 120 local experts — and who made this year’s list: find the full story in this article.
The Cocktail Sanctuary
At Temple, everything begins with a word. Quite literally. Without a reservation, the bar is impossible to find. Once inside, words become the menu: there is no printed list, only a conversation. The bartender asks what you love, what you are drawn to and what mood you are in—then creates a cocktail entirely your own. Candlelight flickers against hanging chains, while a 150-year-old tree from Petropavl presides over the bar. The atmosphere feels less theatrical than ceremonial. Temple is true to its name: a place with its own architecture, its own rituals — and a private confession served in a glass.
Malena is the kind of place films are written about: you come in for five minutes and leave at dawn, with a fateful encounter behind you and life looking subtly different. When the night cannot decide between dinner, cocktails and music, Malena makes the choice irrelevant—everything unfolds in the same frame. The cocktails carry the plot. The Malena Spritz, with brandy, wild strawberry, elderflower and prosecco, has the effortless charm of an Italian comedy. Then the mood shifts: a Paloma, Old Fashioned, Paper Plane or Espresso Martini takes the story from a sunlit aperitivo deep into the night.
Midnight in Astana
Fuller’s is more than a bar with a British name. It is part of a home-grown network of pubs operating under the same name across Astana and Almaty. The name reaches back to Fuller, Smith & Turner, the renowned brewing company founded in the 19th century. Here, London pub culture is recast in local terms: English beer, timber interiors, table football, live music and food designed for the whole table—pub classics with a Kazakh accent. Lager arrives with plates calibrated to the local appetite: burgers, fish and chips, sausages with sauerkraut, wings and mini chebureki. Judging by the demand, this multicultural eclecticism works.
Photos: restaurant websites and social media; Yandex Maps
The Anglo-Kazakh Pub
