PRO cafe Minsk
Vasilki Minsk, Nezavisimosti 16
Vasilki is the place to be, in terms of middle-of-the-road cafes. It looks like a peasant hut, a very very clean peasant hut made of plastic. It is always busy, especially on weekends. Long lines of people waiting to get in are customary – not a pleasant thing if you are sitting near the entrance. The waitress may offer you to share the table with other visitors, or nice visitors, like a polite shopping tourist from Moscow did for us, can offer the arrangement themselves.
Chidlren’s Menu
Chidlren’s Desert Menu – cocktails almost the same prices as Mom’s and Dad’s – not complaining, just saying
Crayons and paper on the menu
‘Wooden’ utensils
Mulled wine (without the wine – a non alcoholic version)
‘Little Vitamin’ Children’s cocktail
‘Little Star’ Children’s French Fries
‘Fresh From The Garden’ salad – really yummy with sunflower seeds, onions, tomatoes and a variety of salads; arguably the best salad at Vasilki cafe
A la Caesar’s
Boletus Mushroom soup plus yummy bread
Frying pan of sausages and pork rind – really, really satisfying (4 hours on the treadmill)
‘Happy Tree Stump’ chicken chop with potatoes - children are welcome in Vasilki
Pear pie – errr, skip it
Cappuccino
Vasilki cafe is right in the center of Minsk. The service can be slow during the lunch hours and weekends so try to look for a ‘clear’ spot to enjoy this chain cafe of national Belarusian cuisine and the Vasilki shop next door.
Golden Coffee Club Minsk Cafe
Golden Coffee Club was abuzz with loud dance music and screaming people inside. Everyone stared at my kid, as if it was a three headed pink elephant with wings, and the second floor, which obscured the only table that wasn’t occupied was roasting with scents of hookah filler (no, it ain’t ‘prostitute’ spelt in a funny way)– apple, cinnamon, cherry.
The overworked waitress, who panted and carried a balloon of negatively charged air around her, forgot to smile, but brought the menu (in Russian and English).
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Anyone who knows me knows I don’t eat pizza. But I was with a friend and the friend looks about as thick as a match (which I could put down to a strict diet of pizzas only), so pizza was ordered, together with a shake for the child and smoothie for said friend.
The coffee at Golden Coffee Club Minsk wasn’t very good, and didn’t wake me up a bit, and with streaks of sweat trickling down my back and forming a pool in between my breasts, I craved water more than anything else. I remembered hours after my operation when I wasn’t allowed to drink and dreamt of all the drinks that were invented by man; that’s what Golden Coffee Club is, upstairs, unless you are a hookah (yes, this is ‘prostitute’ spelt in a funny way) in a tiny-wini bikini. (But I liked the water on the side of my espresso).
The smoothie was good, testified the friend, but the pepperoni pizza looked like it was dropped from the second floor onto the pavement, picked up from under the stilettoed heel of a fashinista, smelling expensive and waving her laminated curls around, and smacked back on the plate. With presentation like this it was no wonder most people in Golden Coffee Club were sitting with straws glued to their lips – this isn’t exactly a place for the gourmand (which I am not).
The waitress brought the bill instead of the cheesecake I ordered, and when I pointed her blunder to her she got mad, then upset, then defensive, instead of saying ‘Sorry’. For a long time, she had been explaining to us why she couldn’t bring tea: they haven’t ordered enough kettles, and since it was full house, the ones they did order were occupied, and we’d have to wait 20 minutes, an hour maybe. Errr, hmmm, ahek-ahek.
On our subsequent visits to Golden Coffee Club with the child we were presented with a children’s menu, tried the chicken soup and chicken fillet club sandwiches, mushroom lasagna, a strawberry-banana smoothie and the most pretentious coffee ‘Lady Strawberry’.
The lasagna was good and we came back again, on a busy Saturday afternoon, to be told no lasagnas were served, and since the rest of the menu suddenly vanished as well, we just had a couple of milkshakes Nostalgia (tasty, orange and peach) and left.
The first floor of Golden Coffee Club is cosy and somewhat dimly lit, with a faux homely atmosphere (books, books everywhere) so popular with the cafe interior designers in Minsk. The place is ALWAYS busy and even the non-smoke area is always full of second hand smoke. In short, it’s not ‘the best cafe in Minsk’, its humble slogan for the website.
Golden Coffee Club is not for the light-hearted. The music is too loud, the people too young and need to have sticks up their asses surgically removed. Unless you want to try hookah (works both ways), don’t go to the second floor. And yes, leave the kids at home. If they run out of this Minsk cafe blocking the entrance and ruining the grand arrival of the next It bitch, you (and the child) are risking a black eye (eyes).
