The restaurant “Palkin” on Nevsky Prospekt 47 in St. Petersburg celebrates the 240th anniversary of the opening of its first restaurant in August.
Before the October Revolution, “Palkin” differed from other elite restaurants in that it served Russian cuisine, and the waiters were dressed like the sexes in taverns. The institution was called the tsar of Russian cuisine.
During its existence the restaurant was visited by many famous public and cultural figures - Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Balmont, Blok, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Gorky, Kuprin, Chekhov, painters Repin, Lukomsky and Sapunov, composers Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and others. For the same reason, the restaurant has been mentioned many times in classical works, for example, in Gogol's “Dead Souls” or in Chekhov's story “No Place”.
During Soviet times the restaurant was closed and its interiors were completely destroyed. More than 25 years ago, the ACM project recreated the famous restaurant.